French language Q&A Forum

hi can you please help me with this example

J'ai encore des cadeaux à acheter - Marie les a déjà tous achetés.

Why is this not Marie en a déjà......

I thought that if it is a partitive then you use en.

thank you for your help

Cordialement

Krissa

Hi there; apologies if this question has been asked and dealt with before. I have just been told that, as a translation of Aurelie eats bread, 'Aurelie mange le pain' is incorrect, with 'Aurelie mange du pain' being the correct answer. I can understand how, if the English was Aurelie is eating bread one would write 'du pain', because Aurelie can only ever be eating some bread at a given moment. I also understand how Aurelie mange le pain would lead one to infer that the sentence is referring to a specific piece of bread that Aurelie is eating. However, surely in English, one of the major connotations of Aurelie eats bread, is that it is a general statement about one of the kinds of food that Aurelie eats (in the same way that one might say Aurelie eats meat (ie Aurelie isn't a vegetarian). And if it is a general statement, then one is effectively saying that Aurelie will eat any bread that is put in front of her. In other words, she doesn't as a general rule, only eat some bread ('du pain') she eats all breads ('le pain'). In which case, shouldn't Aurelie mange le pain be marked correct? What am I missing here? Thanks in advance!