33 Comments
I was almost forgetting about that 'des'='de' in negative sentences. Just in case someone else has the same question.
"In a negative construction, the partitive and indefinite articles (singular and plural) change to de, usually meaning '(not) any'"
Source: http://french.about.com/od/grammar/a/de-vs-du-de-la-des_2.htm
Thanks, I am french and I found if it was better to use singular. In french, I prefer the singular too. On the french forum I put a joke : If I don't have solutions, I can have one solution but not several. I don't know if it understandable in english.
I got it, though it would be more accurately phrased as "If I don't have solutions, I can have one solution etc." To say "I have no solution" means you have none, zero, rather than "I don't have [several] solutions." It's like the difference between a 1 and a 1.0.
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We have a similar joke on English. See the Simpsons and the No Homers Club: https://youtu.be/W7rSYzbpA8k
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I put I have no solution and it was marked wrong - how can they do that when I had no way of knowing it was plural!! In any case, in the English sentence, the singular form sounds more natural, surely.
well, not anymore, they told me wrong this morning with : I have no solution...
I don't have solutions is bizarre in english. Normally you would say, I don't have a solution, or I don't have any solutions
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My translation is : "I do not have the solutions." Can a moderator tell me if this is right or wrong and if it is.. wrong why is it wrong. Thank you un advance.
I think both solutions should be acceped because...
If the questions are :
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As-tu une solution ? Non, je n'ai pas de solution ;
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As-tu des solutions ? Non, je n'ai pas de solutions.
According if we have a " s " or not, we could suppose how the question is. That seems to me more logical and more convenient.
Yeah, I am wondering why this is written in plural French. The spoken French is obviously ambiguous as to solution(s). The French also tends to bring the negative to a singular as in 'de' vs 'des'. Seems to me that the French phrase is written wrong, but this won't effect my speech.
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Interesting, I was marked wrong for writing " I don't have the solutions"....... but when I checked, "any" was not included in the drop down hints , only "about" , "from" & "for". Is there a reason "any" was not there???
Bonjour Lisa. The reasons would be that Duo doesn't provide an exhaustive list of translations/hints; and we can't always rely on the hints to be correct. As you note, 'about' and the other hints provided don't work, so I used a bit of logic: 'the solutions' would be 'les solutions' while 'a solution' would have been the singular 'une solution.' 'Des solutions' would be 'some solutions,' which sounds wrong in English and isn't correct in French grammar as noted previously. Also noted previously, it's not 'une solution' since the sentence uses a plural. in English grammar, 'I don't have solutions' isn't usually used, but 'I don't have any solutions' is a perfectly respectable English excuse. Sentence. Whatever... :)
Like many comments here, I find it bizarre that translations using the singular are not accepted. In the audio, there is no way of knowing "solutions" is plural. I put "I do not have a solution" even though I know "de" often means "some" or "any", because it didn't fit with the singular. Marked wrong of course!
What the differences between J'AI NE PAS and JE N'AI PAS. When/how to use them?
J'ai ne pas is not correct French. You have "J'ai ..." that becomes "Je n'ai pas ..." in the negative (or more complex "Je n'ai aucun ..." / "Je n'ai rien")
