"Il y a des poils de chien partout dans la maison."
Translation:There is dog hair everywhere in the house.
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2788
This english sentence is a very unnatural translation. I agree with others here. It would be more natural as 'there are dog hairs all over the house'
The duolingo translation is fine but so is "there are dog hairs all over the house" and it was marked wrong----I am a native English speaker and asked several people about this and they all said the same as me for first suggestion but agree that both are OK and utterly synonymous. They need a native English speaker at duolingo to avoid their many mistakes in fluent usage of English. In French everything is spelled out but not so in English and their translations are often ponderous and not natural.
619
'Dog hair' as a singular collective noun sounds unnatural here (UK) but it maybe moreusual in American English. 'Dog hair' would be more appropriate in a phrase such as 'dog hair is better than cat hair ...'.
"dog hair" is a categorisation of the type of hair (a usage referred to as "noun as adjective")
"dog's hair" indicates ownership or attribution of the hair
This sentence needs the first form of words as the French poils de chien is using the French equivalent structure to the English "noun as adjective", not the French phraseology indicating ownership.
2306
There's no real reason why not, but that's not how we would normally say it in English.
The dog's fur, yes; while it's still on the dog, it belongs to the dog. When it's on the carpet, it's just dog hair.
An after thought is that in correct English I am not sure there is a word "hairs" but would be interested in some grammatical expert in English to comment. I think the singular and plural for hair is the same---similar to "sheep". The use of "dog hairs" is common usage in fluent English in the context here but may be grammatically incorrect.
I have no problem with the Duo translation but, as is often the case, it is their rejection of other synonymous and fluent translations that is the problem. Examples are, "all over", "throughout", "dog hair" and "dog hairs" are all interchangeable in this sentence. Dog hair acts as a collective noun in this context and would be fine here as would the use of "dog hairs". To be singular you would need to say "a dog hair" or "one dog hair".