ne…pas de

Anita P.C1Kwiziq Q&A regular contributor

ne…pas de

I’ve always thought that in a negation the preposition ‘de’ is used, so in « I don’t waste water » I wrote « je ne gaspille pas d’eau » but this was corrected to « je ne gaspille pas l’eau ». My thought pattern was supported in « when I can’t cycle » - « quand je ne peux pas faire de vélo » (given that : to cycle = faire du vélo). Can this be explained ?

Asked 2 years ago
CécileNative French expert teacher in KwiziqCorrect answer

Hi Anita,

Just to add to Jim's answer -

in general terms, you would say 'l'eau' but if you talked about a specific situation you might use the partitive 

Quand nous campons, je demande aux enfants de ne pas gaspiller d'eau = When we are camping I ask the children not to waste any water

Hope this helps!

Jim J.C1 Kwiziq Q&A super contributor

Hi Anita,

I suspect that to write "I don't waste water" should be "Je ne gaspille pas l'eau" because you need to express "water" in a general sense rather than "any water".

I do agree with you however about "faire (faire de qch) du vélo" where vélo is a countable noun  --  but water is an uncountable noun.

Perhaps this is the answer?

Bonne Journée

Jim

ne…pas de

I’ve always thought that in a negation the preposition ‘de’ is used, so in « I don’t waste water » I wrote « je ne gaspille pas d’eau » but this was corrected to « je ne gaspille pas l’eau ». My thought pattern was supported in « when I can’t cycle » - « quand je ne peux pas faire de vélo » (given that : to cycle = faire du vélo). Can this be explained ?

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