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- Topic: French >
- "Je n'ai pas de solutions."
32 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
560
We have a similar joke on English. See the Simpsons and the No Homers Club: https://youtu.be/W7rSYzbpA8k
498
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 :
-
As-tu une solution ? Non, je n'ai pas de solution ;
-
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.
1405
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???
521
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... :)
618
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!