hexdolk

[ember vigil]

Please be patient

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[fresh zealot]

de le or de la is the partitive article for uncountable nouns like eau

je bois d'eau would mean i drink of water

doesn't really make sense

when it's plural we use de les -> des

[true tundra]

Oh, I see. So we don't use d' as a partitive article?

[fathom granite]

No though it’ll become that when negated

Je bois de l’eau
Je ne bois pas d’eau

[true tundra]

Yes, that too

[fresh zealot]

no, although when you would otherwise use de as the preposition meaning of, then you drop the partitive entirely, so you just have de

[fathom granite]

I drink some water
I don’t drink any water

[fresh zealot]

"j'ai bu beaucoup d'eau"

[true tundra]

Yes, that's what I mean.

Thank you.

[fresh zealot]

since you have to say beaucoup de anyway, you simply drop the de le

since "j'ai bu beaucoup de l'eau" would mean "I drank a lot of the water"

[true tundra]

So after prepositions using de use always de even with plurals and d' before nouns starting with a vowel or silent h.

Like beaucoup de, etc.

[fresh zealot]

when de is just used as a normal preposition, it would sound wrong to say "beaucoup de de l'eau", so we just nix the partitive article entirely

beaucoup d'eau

beaucoup d'amis

[true tundra]

I see.