Answers
May 05, 2014 - 03:37 PM
That's a really bad translation.. avez vous trouvé quelque chose de facilement means absolutely nothing. It's like saying "did you find something of easily". Also "Il a vu quelque de chose de bien" is "He saw something good", not "something well". I don't have the French course so I can't check but this looks weird to me.
May 07, 2014 - 04:42 AM
Thanks Fabrice. They definitely had it as "something well." I guess my point is, bien is not an adjective it is an adverb (right?), so why is it not "quelque chose de bon" for "something good?" And, again, can this construction be used for adverbs as well as adjectives?
May 07, 2014 - 04:31 PM
I noticed that sometimes fluenz is trying to help you figure out which word to use by tweaking the English a bit. At least I've seen this in Fluenz Spanish, where the english phrase sounds a bit convoluted. I think it's the same issue here, I'm not sure how to translate "Il a vu quelque chose de bien" better than "He saw something good" because it's the "de" that tells me it's an adjective, not an adverb. They probably teach you that "good" is "bon", so they're using "well" instead to force you to use "bien". Quelque chose de is always followed by an adjective, so "bien" here is an adjective. "Quelque chose de bon" is also correct too for "Something good". Which one you use depends on wanting to use "good" or "well", hence coming back to the original Fluenz sentence. Because they use "well" in the english sentence, I think it sounds more like "if you saw something well (because you had glasses on)", as opposed to "you saw something good" but again i'm not sure how else they can force you to use "bien" in that sentence. Maybe the sentence they chose was not the best for that.
May 12, 2014 - 09:46 AM
Salut @James Putney, wow, thank you so much for pointing that out to us. You are right that in this case we would say "something good" in English whilst in oral French you could say "quelque chose de bon" (usually when referring to food) AND "quelque chose de bien", for example, when you are talking about a film or clothes - so here "bien" would be used in the sense of "nice". Note that this is not actually strictly correct as you would still talk about "un bon film" and "de bons pantalons". So we will fix that in our next update. Merci!
May 12, 2014 - 03:47 PM
Thanks Fabrice and FL. So, after going over this many times, it is starting to make a little sense. Part of my problem here and elsewhere is my sense that Fluenz does not always use correct English, although they are usually examples of common usage. A case in point is somewhere there is something like "I ran slow." Clearly this is incorrect English, yet I learn from other sites that there are many instances in both French and Spanish when the adverb form can be used as an adjective and vice versa. This is not technically correct in English, and this distinction might be made at some point.
Jun 05, 2014 - 09:35 AM
Hi James
You are absolutely correct, it would be grammatically correct to say "I ran slowly." Yet in some instances we use "street English" where it will help with the translation into the language that you are learning. In Spanish it is absolutely correct to say Yo corrí lento, literally, I ran slow. It is a way for us to help our users make the correct constructions in the language that you are learning. As levels progress we start easing you into those differences and you will have to make the distinctions yourself, but in the beginning levels we try to help you out. That is why in certain instances you run into what we call "awkward English."
You are absolutely correct, it would be grammatically correct to say "I ran slowly." Yet in some instances we use "street English" where it will help with the translation into the language that you are learning. In Spanish it is absolutely correct to say Yo corrí lento, literally, I ran slow. It is a way for us to help our users make the correct constructions in the language that you are learning. As levels progress we start easing you into those differences and you will have to make the distinctions yourself, but in the beginning levels we try to help you out. That is why in certain instances you run into what we call "awkward English."