Moderator:JackFrost
These are essentially the same question, so they get one answer. Both forms are correct, but they have different meanings. The first versions mean "a lot of horses/eyes". The horses and eyes are of indeterminate number, so the underlying article is the partitive "des", but "de" + partitive becomes just "de". Therefore, J'ai des chevaux > *J'ai beaucoup de des chevaux > J'ai beaucoup de chevauxViridzen wrote:1. In the resource for French, it says, in one of the exercises, "J'ai beaucoup de chevaux." Shouldn't it be "des chevaux", since it's plural, or does it always use "de"?
2. I also noticed that it said "Ils ont beaucoup d'yeux." should it say "d'yeux" or "des yeux"? (Also, it seems like a strange sentence to begin with--that's a different story.)
"Ci" is a clitic with a somewhat proximal meaning ("this", as opposed to "that"). It only appears on the end of a noun phrase modified by "ce" (i.e. cet homme-ci "this man", ces jours-ci "these days"). "Ceci" is a pronoun, also with a somewhat proximal meaning. Their distal ("that") counterparts are "là" and "cela".Viridzen wrote:3. What's the difference between "ci" and "ceci"? I feel like I've seen both before, but didn't get there in my book yet.
I admit "beaucoup des" sounds odd in that sentence, but it sounds fine (to me at least) in something like "Beaucoup des chevaux que tu as vus sont malades".melski wrote:You will almost never encounter the sentence "j'ai beaucoup des chevaux", or maybe only in the strict sense "I get a lot from horses", but even there I'll rather say "je reçois beaucoup des chevaux" or something like that. To me it sounds ungrammatical.
The correct form is "j'ai beaucoup de chevaux".
melski wrote:The sentence you proposed, Linguoboy, is already a quite high register.
melski wrote:Well, in that particular sentence it makes sense, even if "beaucoup de chevaux que tu as vus sont malades" is also correct (and sounds more natural to me). I'd recommend Vidrizen to stick to "de" : you will be perfectly understood and you will avoid making mistakes. The sentence you proposed, Linguoboy, is already a quite high register.
(if I were to say this informally I'd use a longer construction : "parmi les chevaux que tu as vus, beaucoup sont malades" or "les chevaux que tu as vus, beaucoup sont malades (very colloquial)"
dEhiN wrote:And if I use "de chevaux", I would translate the sentence into English as "a lot of horses that you saw are sick", which makes no sense.
Viridzen wrote:I'd like to say something: Are there any dialects of French that don't use [ʁ] or [y]? Those sounds bug me and make it impossible to pronounce words almost. I'm wondering, if I ever get over my foreign language anxiety and gain the courage to speak French with people, would I be able to pronounce the letters differently and say it's my accent or something?
Dormouse559 wrote:It only appears on the end of a noun phrase modified by "ce" (i.e. cet homme-ci "this man", ces jours-ci "these days"). "Ceci" is a pronoun, also with a somewhat proximal meaning. Their distal ("that") counterparts are "là" and "cela".
Viridzen wrote:Are there any dialects of French that don't use [ʁ] or [y]?
dEhiN wrote:But the velar rhotic is easier for me, and it is one of the ways the French r is pronounced.
JackFrost wrote:dEhiN wrote:But the velar rhotic is easier for me, and it is one of the ways the French r is pronounced.
If you mean velar trill, yeah you'd sound Canadian enough... Quebecois to be more exact. ;p Although, we generally use the uvular trill, not velar.
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 10 guests