afghandoctor

[spring isle]

Please be patient

Our volunteers look into many questions every day; sometimes it takes them a little while to answer.

Pro tip: you can rename the thread title with `.tr <thread name>`

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.

[stiff cloud]

mes deux chevilles

my two anckles

so you gotta put the artcle

les deux

mes deux

[thorn atlas]

hmmm
in this case you can just say "mes chevilles"… since you only have two

[stiff cloud]

maybe they have 3

🤷‍♀️

[thorn atlas]

in that case you can say "deux de mes chevilles"
but find me the person who needs to say that

[karmic obsidian]

J'ai des ampoules aux chevilles.

[main bone]

sur chacune de mes chevilles

[stiff cloud]

hmm

[twin sleet]

J'ai des ampoules aux deux chevilles

[pastel flicker]

Okay

So there is no way of saying both, you have to work around it?

[frigid herald]

in English, wouldn't you say"I have blisters on my ankles"? since it's plural there is no doubt you have blisters on each one

[errant iris]

Exactly

Kind of annoying that French lacks that ngl

[errant iris]

I mean that’s merely an example but the sentence he gave is very common. Note that “both” means “the two of them”. You wouldn’t use both if he had 3 legs or whatever.
“He broke both of his legs”, he clearly have 2 legs, but saying that instead of “he broke his legs” brings some emphasis

En français l’équivalent serait

Il s’est cassé les deux jambes vs il s’est cassé les jambes

[pastel flicker]

it makes sense, but it just seems a bit flat. I would prefer to say 'both of my ankles'. probably a regional thing, might vary in different countries

double plural ig

[thorn atlas]

I've read that "both" is a remnant of the former dual grammatical number in English (which was lost ages ago)
But dual number was lost in Latin earlier, so it really doesn't happen in French or other romance languages

In any case, it's not really adding any information "both of my legs" and "my legs" are essentially the same in meaning
In English, however, we do tend to use both with body parts we have pairs of
It's simply not necessary to do so in French unless you want to emphasize, in which case there are ways to do it, but nothing like in English

[errant iris]

Ambos/ambas does exist in Spanish btw, I dunno about the other languages though just checked, French be the oddity here