Generalizing articles

Question

Je adore LE Chocolat, but Je mange DU pain.  You are generalizing in both sentences.  I see no difference.  Why is it DU pain?

Accepted Answer

Bonjour Mike,

J'adore le pain = I love bread (generalising)
Je n'aime pas le pain = I don't like bread (generalising)
Je mange le pain = I eat the bread (specific - this one)

Je mange du (de + le) pain = I eat (some quantity of the) bread (specifying a quantity)
Je ne mange pas de pain = I don't eat bread (general statement)

I hope this is helpful.
Bonne journée !

Answer

J'adore le chocolat -- I love chocolate (in general).Je mange du pain. -- I eat some bread. (specific statement)The second one is a statement about you eating some bread. You could generalize it to mean "I eat bread" (as a principle). Then you would use de instead of du. It depends on what you want to say.

Answer

This question comes up a lot, Mike. Maybe this Q&A will help:

https://progress.lawlessfrench.com/questions/view/what-to-use-when-speaking-about-generalities

I'm pretty sure you can't say "je mange de pain", Chris. It's not like "avoir besoin de", for example, where there is already a "de" in the expression, and you can just omit the partitive article.