#(vous) vs. (te)

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

winter skiffBOT
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Please be patient

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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.

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(vous) vs. (te)

hallow totem
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Why is using vous in this context incorrect?

wild stag
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It should've been right

shadow coyote
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Duolingo wants you to keep it informal

wild stag
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Another example of why Duolingo is too strict sometimes

wild stag
shadow coyote
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they should explain why some answers are wrong with more detail. “Your sentence is grammatically correct but we wanted a different answer because..”

shadow coyote
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That would be my guess

wild stag
shadow coyote
wild stag
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Otherwise you'd be confused when you have to translate, 'Good morning, Professor, I would like to talk to you'

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or 'Hello boss, can I talk to you?'

shadow coyote
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Quora

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 ...

wild stag
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or anything involving formal vouvoiement

wild stag
shadow coyote
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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

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But I had a long French streak and I don’t remember that coming up

shadow coyote
# wild stag kinda bad on Duolingo's part ngl but sure

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 🤷🏻‍♀️

delicate flame
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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.

unborn yew
shadow coyote
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“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.