How do you handle changing articles?

[charred sedge]

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How do you handle changing articles?

[swift yacht]

well its negative and indefinite so you just use de regardless if its sing or plu

il n'y a pas de métro ni d'arrêts de bus

is there sth else you're confused about?

if it was positive it'd just be il y a un métro et des arrêts

[frosty lintel]

Ah interesting. I thought that I wasn't allowed to say "il y a un métro et des arrêts" because the articles are changing in plurarlity.

Is it just as long as they are all definite or indefinite its fine?

So in short:

positive: only definite and indefinite needs to be continued
negative: everything would use "de" regardless of plurality

[sick marsh]

i think if you're making a list of things, you just use whatever article you need/want for each item, same as English.

there's the knife, some coins and a box of pins

il y a le couteau, des pièces, et une boîte d'épingles

negative:

il n'y a pas le couteau ni de pièce ni de boîte d'épingles

the knife isn't there, nor are there any coins or boxes of pins (had to reformulate to make it work in English)

[swift yacht]

your negative sentence sounds bad to me

i think you need "pas" to get the "de"

with ni...ni you use regular articles

[sick marsh]

oh i had no idea, thanks

[sick marsh]

how about now?

[swift yacht]

maybe it's the 4 am effect but

the definite article after il y a throws me off

i mean you can say that for sure but

[sick marsh]

same

it's very unusual

[swift yacht]

switching to indefinite after sounds weird

ask someone from québec i need sleep 😭

[sick marsh]

au lit

i think i would just put the definite article at the end to avoid that

il n'y a pas de pièce ni de boîte d'épingles ni le couteau

I couldn't even translate the sentence to English at first because "there isn't the knife" makes no sense

[raw pier]

You do in fact repeat articles so it’s actually encouraged

[sick marsh]

"there's no coins, box of pins, or the knife" is much smoother in English as well

[raw pier]

Il y a un couteau, de l’eau, et des oignons sur ta table

Il n’y a pas de couteau, d’eau, d’oignons sur la table

[swift yacht]

you can turn the et into ou

or ni

knee

Il n’y a pas de couteau, d’eau, genou d’oignons sur la table

[sick marsh]

[raw pier]

Il n’y a pas de couteau, ni d’eau, ni d’oignons

Although

If you are using ni ni, there’s no partitive article

[swift yacht]

oh yeah

uh

idk

gn

[sick marsh]

wait what

nini yez

[swift yacht]

ni couteau, ni eau, ni oignons

[sick marsh]

riiight

thanks bertie

[swift yacht]

ig that sounds better with plural nouns tho

[raw pier]

Il n’y a ni couteau, ni eau, ni oignons

[swift yacht]

idkk

french is weird

[raw pier]

This bloody internet is doing my head in for fucks sake

[swift yacht]

indonesia internet moment?

[raw pier]

The logic here is that the first negation is « pas » so what follows next is the rules under pas which does have the negated partitive. You’re essentially just saying:
« Il n’y a pas de couteau, et pas d’eau, et pas d’oignons ».
It’s just that for the second and third « pas » we use « ni » because « et » and « ou » often becomes « ni » in the negative

[raw pier]

Whereas here, the negative adverb is « ni » which operates under a different rule of not having any partitive article

[frosty lintel]

Sorry I had to run off for dinner. I'm trying to catch up with the thread

I'm seeing "d" being removed from the negation example because its leveraging "ni".

So can I surmise it as :

positive : lists need to maintain definite or indefinite articles

negative : lists do not use "de" with "ni"

And that the count can vary for positive lists as long as whether it is definite or not is maintained?

[swift yacht]

well d' is just de before vowels but yeah

[swift yacht]

no you just indicate both paramaters with the article

je vois le couteau, du sucre, des dés, du jambon, des crêpes, les céréales....

you can do whatever in english too right

[frosty lintel]

I thought I read above repeating articles was encouraged

[swift yacht]

yeah i think that means you don't go
il y a de l'eau, sucre, jambon

yeah don't do that

[frosty lintel]

But I never did that

[swift yacht]

give each noun its article

[swift yacht]

well keep not doing it

👍

[raw pier]

That was in your point about how you think un metro et des arrêts is not possible because you’re repeating different articles

You are supposed to do that

So it’s never not allowed

[swift yacht]

i mean it's not repeating if theyre different

[frosty lintel]

But I never said no articles thats why I was confused

One moment let me find what was the exact thing I wrote earlier that had someone say they all have to match or something. Maybe what I wrote out was breaking some weird exception idk

Okay so I was told I couldn't do this

"Les glaces sont à côté du yaourt, la crème, le beurre et d'autres choses à droite de ce magasin."

And that it had to be

"Les glaces sont à côté du yaourt, de la crème, du beurre et d'autres choses à droite de ce magasin."

[raw pier]

This is a related but different case

Because we repeat prepositions

The expression here is « à côté de qqch (next to something) »

Here, what we have is essentially :
« à côté du yaourt, à côté de la crème, à côté du beurre et à côté d'autres choses »

[frosty lintel]

Ah okay so its like that because I had to continue the "de" from à côté de

But if I just have a list period I don't have to continue that

[raw pier]

We can omit the other instances of « à côté » but not the « de »

This is a general thing

[frosty lintel]

Okay, I'm glad I asked about this again because I didn't realize I walked away from that not fully understanding

[raw pier]

« Tu as parlé à Michel, à Louis, à Marc, à Jean, pas à moi ?! »

Notice how the preposition à gets repeated there

[frosty lintel]

I seee

Thank you so much

[raw pier]

In English, we would've omitted that preposition:
'You talked to Michael, Louis, Mark, John, but not me?!'

[frosty lintel]

Gotcha gotcha

Ah btw thank you for the reverso and wordreference recs!

My friends said I've been getting a lot better at writing

Those tools definitely helped and my book has been providing more examples of words in context, so I feel a lot better about how I'm approaching my studies

[frosty lintel]

I wanted to let you know but I wasn't sure of your timezone and how tagging worked in the server so thanks!

I appreciate everyone who helped here of course. It sounds like handling lists could get more complex than I anticipated so I'm glad I brought it up