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- "Voulez-vous manger ?"
100 Comments
Would you like to eat...looks right, marked wrong???? Do you want to eat is not the only way to translate this. Please add "would you like to eat as an accepted answer" or explain why not.
I agree. For English speakers they are the same: wish, like and want, as long as they are conjugated properly.
In English it's a matter of word choice, which is influenced by the regional variations in North American English. But if conjugated properly and otherwise grammatical, all of these should count as valid translations of the text, at least for purposes of teaching us French. Et voilà.
As an Australian, I am wondering why it's only the regional variations of North American English which would have relevance here....? ;))
I know, I know, but they're the only ones I have much first-hand knowledge of. (And if I wasn't a hockey fan who has visited Canada a few times--and was paying attention--I wouldn't know anything about Canadian English {or French} either. Sometimes the US feels like a different planet.)
But if you want to see a really cool and incredibly detailed North Am. English accent map, with clickable sound files and everything, this guy Aschmann put it together--despite the odd URL hashtag this is the main page, scroll down for the large map:
Thank you; very interesting to peruse the complexities found in one area of the world. I'll look out for other maps as English now has so many variations particularly here in Asian regions. About English language history (speaking as we are in a French learning site...!) Melvyn Bragg's The Adventure of English is a good broader brush look at it in a very entertaining format.
'Voudrais' means would want, meaning would like. See conditional verb endings, its a modifier, and with this verb makes it more polite.
Do you want is a more direct translation.
"Would you like" is the subjunctive form of "do you want". The first expresses a courteous mood while the second is a direct question.
Well, okay, but "Would you like" is also the Southernjunctive form of "Do you want", there is no way my English-teacher mom would've let me ask that question "rudely". If that's the standard I'm going to get this wrong every time. We have a cultural misunderstanding here.
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I know, one is polite and the other is quite direct. As a nearly native French speaker, I translated it as "Would you" and once again got caught by Duo's literal translations. Sometimes we have to read the question or risk getting an error when it's not always an error per se.
Agree. This is the way a POLITE English person would express herself. Should be accepted.
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Agreed! 'Would you like?' over 'Do you want?' every time - unless you're trying to get a five-year-old to put on his raincoat 'Do you want to get wet?'
But in French we use 'voundrais' for 'would' right!?!... So when you translate 'Je voundrais un cafe' you'll get something like 'I would like to have coffee'. Just wanna make my explanation small :).
Ahh, je n'ai pas su qu'il est cannibal! Je suis dans un piège.
Ahh, I didn't know that he is a cannibal. I am in a trap
'Would you like'... 'would' makes the verb like conditional. See conditional verb endings. 'Voudrais' means would want; voudrais-vous manger is a more polite form.
How does one remember what a word looks like in every form? I don't know what each form of veux looks like and it doesn't seem like there's a rule that dictates how to tell the difference
Ok, in French, there are three groups of verbs.
* 1st group. verbs, which end with -er (exception: aller - to go). They conjugate so:
Je parle.
Tu parles.
Il parle.
Nous parlons.
Vous parlez.
Ils parlent.
* 2nd group. verbs, which end with -it (there are a few exceptions).
Je finis.
Tu finis.
Il finit.
Nous finissons.
Vous finissez.
Ils finissent.
* 3rd group. There are irregular verbs. You should remember their conjugation, guy! There are some rules, but they aren't important, you will see them when you look at them. For vouloir:
Je veux.
Tu veux.
Il veut.
Nous voulons.
Vous voulez.
Ils veulent (as I remember).
I recommend you a very useful site: les-verbes.com. Simply type your verb and you will see it in all tenses :). Good luck!
I wrote ''voulez-vous mangez'' and got it right. But i guess it's a mistake, no? Because 'manger' should be in the infinitive form, not conjugated.
Voice recognition fails here. 20 times of good pronunciations, and still nothing:( I loose my heart.
I generally do a lesson a few times to practice it, but after failing this particular pronunciation one every time, I decided to do two tests, both of which it still rejected: 1) I asked our French au pair to repeat the phrase and 2) I clicked to start recording then hit play on your own sample speaker. If neither of those pass, how am I supposed to as somebody trying to learn?
It may also be an issue with your microphone. My husband's mic won't accept anything either of us says, but my mic will pick it up as long as it's reasonably close.
Wanna is much less formal than the vous form, so it's just plain wrong. Plus, Duolingo can't really be expected to be able to parse all the natural dialectical English that isn't 'acceptable' when speaking 'properly'.
It's not the same. I live in America and have not met a single native English speaker that doesn't use "wanna" EXCLUSIVELY. In speech of course, but linguists don't care about writing, and even so, I think "wanna" is becoming very acceptable even in a written sense.
Nice Sontaran, by the way :)
We all want to communicate with each other, don't we? We are not all Americans and there has to be a generally accepted norm. For business English and in other formal forums all over the world, we wouldn't even be using the contractions I'm using here. We need to have a polite and understandable English for people everywhere. That's what we are all here to do, to learn clear and understandable general English (French, Spanish) for people who don't live in the same regions.
I understand your point, but that's a very slippery slope to go down. I live in the UK, and most of the people I meet use phrases like "gotta" (for "got to") and "innit" (for "isn't it") in common speech all the time. I'd never expect a language program to accept these as valid words.
There's a very good argument that, for Spanish speakers learning English, it's worthwhile learning to recognise these types of words, but I don't think there's any reason for Duolingo to accept these as valid English answers when learning Spanish.
(and thanks :-) )
I think it is denying these types of responses that is a slipper slope to prescriptivism, a linguistic sin. There's not such thing as "THE LANGUAGE OF ENGLISH", since languages are always evolving. This program is already a few years behind in the development of English; I'd rather it not stay behind while English continues marching along its albeit chaotic path of change.
Can I suggest that you need not presume that prescriptivism is a linguistic sin - that is a rather large generalisation, and doesn't seem true to me. Yes, language does evolve, but not as fast as that. I have taught English to young adults for years and in that time, yes, I've had to adjust to some evolution, but not at the core. People accept that we all (not just Americans) say "I wanna" and other shortenings, but we don't use it in general written communication yet, even after decades of saying it. There is a difference between what we say aloud to people at hand, and what we write to the world at large, despite the informality of social media.
Because it is a question and so the phrase becomes inverted. Just as "vous êtes" means you are but when inverted "êtes-vous" becomes are you?
Is there anybody else who got the red/wrong color for just the question mark in the pronunciation exercise? I keep going high-pitched at the end, like you're suppose to with questions, but I keep getting it wrong.
Can "Est-que ce vous voulez manger?" be another way to say it? and if I say that, should it be voulez vous or vous voulez?
I think when you make a question from Est-ce que, you leave the sentence structure as for the statement, as in 'Vous avez un chien' becoming 'Est-ce que vous avez un chien?'
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Be careful to the order of the words. The correct answer is "Est-ce que vous voulez manger ?"
"would you like' means the same as 'do you want' but is more polite in American english.
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Yes, your translation is perfect. But learners should be aware of the difference between present and conditional : "vouloir" --> "to want", "Je veux" --> "I want", "vous voulez"--> "you want", "Je voudrais" --> litteraly "I would want" ("I would like"), "Vous voudriez" --> litteraly "you would want" (you would like).
What's the difference between Vous voulez manger and Voulez vous manger, both with a raised intonation at the end?
I am English not American and the language is slightly different! Itis not a mistake.
Would you like to eat should be accepted. This about vernacular equivalence, right?
In polite American English we would say "Would you like to eat?" "Do you want to eat?" sounds too informal.
Would you like to eat? ....should be correct: also corresponds to Duolingo drop downs also...Simples!
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Twice Duo has rejected my "Would you like to eat," which is a bit more polite than "Do you want to eat?" Perhaps Duo needs to learn some manners!
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"Would you like to eat?" is much closer to the true French meaning. "Do you want to eat?" is cruder, more direct and less polite. I do not think that kind of abruptness is what the French speaker means when he uses "voulez-vous."
I keep flagging thid up with duolingo, its far more polite in (uk) english to ask would you like..i just wish they were consistent.
Duo uses American English I think? If so maybe that's the reason for some slight differences in translation at times.
Come on, Duolingo, " would you like to eat" is different than "do you want to eat? " How????
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Voulez-vous mangez ? is a formal way of asking (use of inversion, use of vous which is a formal way if you speak to a single person).
I believe that your proposal is far from being formal.
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Hi Chris from west Yorkshire England here do you want , would you like , Same but different ☹️
I Totally agree with the last comment. in English either is acceptical
I agree with the people who posted 5 years ago. "Would you like to eat" is a nicer way of saying "Do you want to eat " and should be accepted as correct.
Hmm, "would you like to eat" marked incorrect? Sounds like an acceptable polite translation to English from French.
This is weird...voulez-vous sounds polite enough...why not be polite as well in english?
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"Would you like to eat? should be correct. "Je voudrais" was marked wrong as "I want"and the "correct" answer was "I would like." Sooo.... why is "what you would like to eat" wrong and "What do you want to eat" correct? "Would like"= "want" in American English.
