"Il est comme son chien, il faut toujours qu'il montre les dents."
Translation:He is like his dog, he always has to bare his teeth.
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I don't know in english, but in french, "montrer ses dents" means that as a dog you try to look fierce and defend yourself/what you own/your territory.
- Il faut montrer les dents. = It is necessary to show/bare the teeth.
- Il faut qu'il montre les dents. = It is necessary that he show/bare his teeth. = It is necessary for him to show/bare his teeth. = He has to show/bare his teeth.
The "il" in "il faut" is an impersonal or dummy subject (like the word "it" in "it is necessary), so you need another "il" if you're talking about a real subject, i.e. he . (Of course other pronouns would be used for other subjects as appropriate.)
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why is "he is always baring his teeth" as opposed to "he always bares his teeth" marked incorrect? they're both present tense.
I used "ses dents" the first time but got presented with this as correct:
"Il est comme son chien, il lui faut toujours montrer les dents."
So when it came up again, that's what I wrote but now it's apparently:
"Il est comme son chien, il faut toujours qu'il montre les dents."
What will be the correct answer next time????
Yes, but there is a subtle difference between the two. "Must" is used when you you talk about the necessity to follow your own decision or someone's order/demand. "has to" is used to describe the necessity arising from the circumstances such as the necessity to do some routine or abide by the rules. In tenses other than the present, though, 'must' is replaced with the appropriate forms of "have to".
My sense of it is that at least in North America we use "must" almost exclusively to express a supposition of which we're relatively certain: "Q: Who's at the door? A: It must be John." The same sentence can use "has to", which strikes me as a little stronger, either in certainty or desperation: "It has to be John."
And we use "have to" for any sort of duty or obligation, whether internally or externally motivated, and whether rule-based, routine-based, decision-based, or command-based, except perhaps very formally: "It's not enough to say that we should . We absolutely must !" It sounds somewhat old-fashioned or literary, at least to the North American ear, to use "must" with respect to an obligation, but it can have a certain motivational poetry to it, which can make it useful in speeches, for example, and in other formal discourse. Colloquially it's virtually competely avoided in this sense.
In tenses other than the present, "must" is often replaced with the appropriate form of "have to" ("had to" etc.), except that for suppositions we can still use "must" in constructions that refer to the past: "She's here already? She must have sped the whole way." The word "must" itself would seem to remain in the present tense here, but the question of tense becomes more of an issue if we say something like "We thought she must have sped the whole way." (Come to think of it, this sort of subordinate structure seems to work to put an obligatory "must" into the past as well: "We were convinced that we must leave immediately" — but again, "had to" would be used colloquially in this latter sense.)
I think you're right about the distinction here. At first I disagreed, but the more I tried out example sentences in my head, I changed my mind. I don't know that I would find it odd if I heard somebody use the construction, but it's very unlikely that I'd use it myself, it seems. "have to" or "have got to" would be more usual. It's an interesting point that I don't think I'd have noticed on my own.
Usually when that happens, you've made some other mistake (e.g. a typo) in the sentence, and Duolingo's not good at identifying the sentence you tried to write, so even though the program makes an attempt to suggest something close to your answer, it often misses the mark, suggesting a different verb etc.
To me, 'He always has to bare his teeth' implies that he is rather aggressive and 'up for a fight', and shows it in the same way that a dog would (it doesn't have to be his dog!). Which is the first interpretation given by javatete above.
It's worth noting that in English you don't just show your teeth if you are being aggressive, you bare them ('reveal them' / 'make them naked'). The French (and their dogs) just show their teeth. Of course, English speakers show their teeth to their dentist.
the first time I did this DL gave '...il doit toujours montrer...' and the second time DL gave '...il faut toujours qu'il montre...'. as the translation???
I assume that you are asking why 'must' is not accepted. My take is that if we say say someone 'has to bare their teeth' we don't usually mean that they 'must' do it (due to some external cause) but that their character is such that they do it. So there is a difference between the two in English. I presume this is the French take on it as well, so 'must' is not accepted.
AARG! Some problems that I have with this idiom it tells me that i'm right not to have the "qu'il", and others mark me wrong. Which is it? (Yes, I have read other comments saying that you should not take the idioms courses until you are further progressed, and wish that I had waited a little longer, however I found two or three that I really like and was able to memorize even if I don't understand all of the grammar)
As long as your sentence is a correct translation, the precise structure shouldn't matter. A correct answer is a good answer.
Your entire sentence has to be correct, mind you. And if you get a multiple choice question, you have to pick all the correct answers (or at least that was the format when this comment was first posted).
However, if you answered correctly but were marked wrong, then you have something to report.
It is about being hostile. I know some linguistics. In Romanian we have a similar expression.