Nous faisons du waterpolo vs Nous jouons au waterpolo?

Question

Nous ________ waterpolo.We play waterpolo."jouons au" is marked incorrect and "faisons du" is correct. Yet your explanation says to use "jouons au" for a sport that you play regularly. "We play waterpolo" means we play it regularly. That's an unambiguous English sentence. There is no other way to translate that. No English-speaking person would use the phrase "We play" for a single incident. They'd say, "We're playing waterpolo." This seems like a bug to me. Even the article you link to earlier in this discussion uses "jouons au" for waterpolo. Either you need to explain this better or change the quiz answer.ETA: In fact, if you type "We play water polo" into Google translate, it says "Nous jouons au water polo." If you google "jouer à vs faire de" you get this explanation:To remember when to use each verb: if the sport involves a ball, use jouer. If not, use faire.Someone brought this up 3 years ago. You updated the lesson 2 months ago. This should've been addressed already.

Accepted Answer

Bonjour Janet,
I took a look at this test question and I can confirm that both "jouons au" and "faisons du" are both accepted as correct answers. I took a look at your test history and I can see what happened. I've transferred your query via our Helpdesk to give you more details. ;-)
Merci et bonne journée !

Answer

I guess the difference is between "We play waterpolo" vs. "We are playing waterpolo". The first one talks about the general activity, maybe you're in a team and you go to training 3 times a week. The second one talks about being in the pool and playing at this very moment. With this in mind, it is maybe clearer why faire du waterpolo is preferred. It's a subtle difference, but the flavor is a bit different.