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It's not simple to distinguish between "La fille" and "Les filles" :(
This one was a toughie but if you first learn to distinguish between the 'la' and the 'le' sound then the 'les' isn't too far off (it sounds exactly the same as 'le' if the letter after it isn't a vowel) Good luck! :)
Another sign of plural: the verb. "elle lit" (EL LI)vs "elles lisent" (EL LIZ)
The way to know if it is girl or girls is to look for the s on the end of fille and then you will know weather it is girl or girls. So in away its plural sense is very much like it in English. :-)
My answer was "The girls are reading the paper" I knew they were talking about the newspaper but simply saying 'paper' is common in everyday speech.
Maybe you could change that.
It would misleading once back translated to French: "les filles lisent le papier", knowing that "un papier" is only one article in a newspaper or a simple note on paper.
- The girls are watching the news on the television
- The girls are listening to the news on the radio
- The girls are reading the news in the newspaper
- The girls are reading the news online
- The girls are reading the news on their phones
"News" is not "newspaper", "radio" or "television". You need to be more specific.
does "The girls are reading the newspaper" work here as well?
Also, it was extremely hard to hear the mechivoice say lisent.
Yes, "The girls are reading the newspaper" works. The -ent in "lisent" is not pronounced in French.
So this isn't the same as "The girls are reading a newspaper" since le is not un then?
that's right: it is not about "any" newspaper but "the/le" newspaper, like "this one"
"lisent" is pronounced LEEZ.
Whenever the suffix is an -e or contains an -e (non accented), the last sound you hear is the previous consonant sound:
- il parLe or ils parLent = PARL -> NOTE: all 1st group verbs follow this pattern (infinitive in -er)
I thought I'd test out 'daughters' for 'filles', but no go. Is that a possible translation here?
"filles" can translate to "daughters" if there is a family context. There is none here.
le père et les filles lisent le journal = the father and daughters read the newspaper
ses filles lisent le journal = his/her daughters read the newspaper
How do you pronunce lisent is there something i can get to guide me to say it correctly ?
http://forvo.com/ is very good to hear native speakers saying all sorts of words. If a word you're interested in hearing isn't available, you can request it.
Its not "The girl read newspaper" but is "The girls are reading the newspaper"....
I have no idea what you mean by that. If you mean that the words have to agree with each other, the same thing happens in English and almost every other language. E.g. "I have three cats" can't be *"I has three cat".
