Descendre de

Question

I was doing an exercise about what in subject, the phrase was: Jacques est descendu du haricot magique". I translated it as "Jack climbed down the magic beanstalk" and the system told me that the correct answer was "Jack got off the magic beanstalk". Why?

Jim Jones · Accepted Answer

Bonjour Miriam 
Descendre du.   This means that he got off from the ....... where du is from the ... preposition plus definite article.
Bonne continuation
Jim

Lu Mi · Answer

Hi Miriam. Your thought process makes sense in English - It's better to say that he climbed down the beanstalk rather than got off it (at least for me, I also got a bit flustered while choosing the answer). But you need to notice the pattern used to get the answer. Since the French sentence uses the auxiliary etre + conjugated verb + preposition (du), the translation would be "to get off something". If they wanted you to choose the "climbed down" answer, the French sentence would have used the auxiliary avoir + conjugated verb + noun (l'haricot), and then your answer would've been marked as correct. Hope that makes sense :-)

Jim Jones · Answer

Salut Lu MAgreed, and here is the lesson:-https://french.kwiziq.com/revision/grammar/descendre-can-be-used-with-avoir-or-etre-in-le-passe-compose-and-changes-meaningBonne journéeJim