"She is eating my fish."
Translation:Elle mange mon poisson.
66 Comments
"poisson" is masculine. So it can be "mon poisson" or "mes poissons"."ma" is feminine.
Oxford Dictionary of English tells that the plural form of fish can also be 'fish':
"fish 1 |fɪʃ| noun ( pl. same or fishes )"
first I answered "mon" and it was wrong - should have answered "mes" as well. Now I answer both and it is wrong - should have only answered "mon". All this emphasis on translation is a PITA - not serving the purpose of learning - more hair splitting than anything else.
that might help(sorry if you already know it):
mon is when the object you're talking about is masculine and singular.
ma is when the object you're talking about is feminine and singular.
mes is when the objects you're talking about are plural.
Maybe something else in the sentence was grammatically incorrect. I've been caught out like that.
It's not! Must have been fixed, because I checked it as well and no hearts were lost. :)
You can tell both, so you can translate both, poissons ->fishes, fish like a countable, and you can translate also, poissons -> fish uncountable(the whole group of of individual fishes), son both are right
That was so unfair -.- I only had one heart and was supposed to decide if they would take "fish" as plural and singular or only singular. How was I supposed to know what version they were using...Some say fish, some say fishes -.-
I checked Elle mange mon poisson and Elle mange mes poissons and the system said it was incorrect. Fish is masculine and so mon poisson should work and for plural mes poissons should work too. I don't understand :(
In English one says, "one fish, two fish." Is it also true that in French one would say, "un poisson, deux poisson?" without an "s" at the end? If that's the case, then, "mon poisson and mes poisson," would both be correct answers.
No, as opposed to the irregular plural form in English, "poisson" is not special in this regard. It follows the general rule that French plurals have an 's' at the end.
Clearly a mistake programmers of duolingo should revise. At least is confusing and not pedagogic
However, strictly speaking it is incorrect to use he word "fishes" as the plural of "fish" "Fishes" when used as a noun, refers to multiple species of fish. So whenever you want to use the plural of fish you should always use fish
The original sentence "She is eating my fish" is vague. Both "mon poisson" and "mes poissons" should both be correct (and currently are) if the context used for "fish" is both singular and plural. However it's really difficult to determine whether the program is asking us to be literal or otherwise with our interpretation of the original sentence when there doesn't seem to be any consistency across the program for either literal or subjective interpretation. I'm at least hopeful that as Duolingo grows and becomes more popular that little irregularities like this will be ironed out!
What the! First time I answered this question, it says both Elle mange mon poisson and Elle mange mes poissons were right. Second time, it marked me wrong for choosing both. Now on the third time, i chose just the Elle mange mon poisson option and still wrong. Will I ever get this right!?
It is saying she is eating my fish, not she is eating my fishes. Therefore the anser should be 1
It says my FISH, not Fishes!? Why is poissonSS also ok answer when it's not plural? :S
Because "fish" is also the correct plural of "fish" in English (fishes is not actually the correct plural)
The collective plural of fish is always fish in the UK; in the US, fishes is encountered as well. When referring to two or more kinds of fish, the plural is fishes.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fish
Contextually, it was not defined if it were singular or not so if you are talking semantically you are correct, but practically, it's kind of vague.
Yep, fishes is correct when referring to multiple species And I guess we are learning English here, not "American" :-)
why, if fish is singular, one of the anwers is mes poissons,is not plural poissons?
Because in English the plural of fish is also "fish" which makes the French plural option also correct
she is eating my fish , as far as I konw means elle mange mon poisson, and not elle mange mes moissons/ I did check the right answer ang got it wrong.
"du" = "de" + "le". Thus aware that "Elle mange du poisson" means "She eats fish", I tried translating "She is eating my fish" as "Elle mange de mon poisson". This was not accepted. Is this a grammatical fact of French?
Hi, faithm.
As I understand it, ma is the singular feminine, while mon is the masculine singular, and before a vowel. They all translate in English to "my".
Eg. Le robe = the dress (feminine) Ma robe = MY dress
Le gant = the glove (masculine) Mon gant = MY glove
However, if the noun begins with a vowel, you always use MON, even if it is a feminine noun.
Eg. Une orange = an orange (feminine) MON orange = MY orange.
If the plural form is used, you use MES
Mes robes = my dresses mes gants = my gloves mes oranges = my oranges
(Hope this helps a bit. I'm sure there are exceptions though!)
