#(vous) vs. (te)
1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)
Our volunteers look into many questions every day; sometimes it takes them a little while to answer.
Make it descriptive, including relevant context, but also to the point. This way you improve your chances of getting a more relevant and specific answer.
(vous) vs. (te)
Why is using vous in this context incorrect?
It should've been right
Duolingo wants you to keep it informal
Another example of why Duolingo is too strict sometimes
tbf there's no indication here of formality
they should explain why some answers are wrong with more detail. “Your sentence is grammatically correct but we wanted a different answer because..”
It uses the informal singular because it wants people to only vouvoie in plural
That would be my guess
It's been a while since I've used Duolingo but my understanding is that it teaches you both singular and plural vouvoie
Maybe it’s changed since but when I first used it, it was mostly tutoie for singular
Otherwise you'd be confused when you have to translate, 'Good morning, Professor, I would like to talk to you'
or 'Hello boss, can I talk to you?'
Other people are complaining about the same thing https://www.quora.com/Why-do-Duolingo-s-French-lessons-use-the-more-informal-tu-rather-than-vous
Answer (1 of 3): I don’t use Duolingo but from what I can see they are trying to teach you a sort of laid-back French, the sort you would speak with a friend or a pen-pal. I for example noticed they make you do sentences with the pronoun on in a meaning of nous, which is said a lot in daily life ...
or anything involving formal vouvoiement
kinda bad on Duolingo's part ngl but sure
Duolingo doesn’t really teach you formal stuff, it uses tu for simplicity purposes, maybe in later units (I never reached them) it explains the formal vous
But I had a long French streak and I don’t remember that coming up
It depends how you look at it, I think it’s a gamified app to simply teach you entry level stuff. If you want to learn how to talk to your boss formally or write academic text then Duolingo isn’t the place for it 🤷🏻♀️
Perhaps semantically and pragmatically, "te" would happen to be more common here. To be clear, I agree that "vous" ought to have been accepted. But consider whom you'd be waking up. In most cases, it's somebody que tu tutoies — un ami, un amant, un membre de ta famille.
That said, I can imagine cases where you'd wake up somebody and excuse yourself by using "vous." Just not as many.
You're forgetting that vous is also the plural you regardless of formality.
In any case, there is no reason for Duolingo to not accept a correct translation. This is an oversight that needs to be reported.
@unborn yew I’m not forgetting that because we spoke about it here
“It wants people to only vouvoie in plural” means it only wants to use “vous” in plural situations. I was talking about the 2nd person plural when saying this.