"Tu veux de la purée avec les saucisses de veau ?"
Translation:Do you want mashed potatoes with the veal sausages?
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it seems that using the article la might suggest talking about "the" mashed potatoes...same as talking about "the" sausages...but there's only one 'the' to allocate among the words given.
No. My comment directly above this from six months ago responds to this point: de la is the (feminine) partitive article, referring to an undefined quantity of a substance. The partitive article is modifying purée and the definite article is modifying saucisses de veau, so the only valid translation is "Do you want (some) mashed potatoes with the veal sausages?"
It is the partitive article de la (treated as one word) being used here, which means 'some' or is left untranslated.
Rarely is only one potato mashed, but even if it did start as a singular potato, we call the dish mashed potatoes.
2302
In the UK we tend to treat it as a substance, "mashed potato" ("mash" for short).
That makes sense. In the US, it tends to focus on the potatoes and different ways of preparing them: baked potatoes, scalloped potatoes, mashed potatoes...
It's because purée by itself is short for purée de pommes de terre. Every other puréed substance is purée de qch : purée de marrons, purée d'ail, purée de carottes, etc.
- 1615
Same as English, or UK English at least - if we hear 'mash', unqualified, we assume mashed potatoes.
- 1094
Do the French really only ever puree their potatoes? Or do they mash them, like civilised beings?
Puréed potato is fine as a garnish, but when served as a veg, the texture of mashed potato is far superior.
That would mean the sausages made from a specific calf, while saucisses de veau are just general veal sausages.
Well, first of all, it would be du veau, since veau is masculine. But the reason why it's les saucisses de veau instead is because that's a compound noun, whereas de la in de la purée is the partitive article. They really have no relationship. When you translate compound nouns into French, they take the form 'X of Y', so saucisses de veau is 'sausages of veal', or 'veal sausages'. De la purée just means '(some) mashed potatoes'.