What about the cake?

Question

What about the cake? is translated as Et la gateau? 'And the cake?' . Agreed they are almost synonymous, but Kwiziq is picky about this sort of thing. Is 'Et..' really the best transalation of 'What about...' ?

Accepted Answer

Hi Chris, 
The point of this exercise was to use the correct pronoun referrring to the word ‘la galette’ which was given, so feminine.
Had we chosen the word ‘gâteau’ or even ‘cake’ they would have been masculine.
As to the other part of your question, Maarten has answered correctly.
Bonne Continuation!

Answer

Chris, the context is important - in a casual setting which would be the usual situation with either form of the question, "Et le gateau ?" would be commonly used, following on from discussion of something closely related, where in English we might say either 'what about the .." or "and the ..." eg "J'ai fini mon repas". « Et le gâteau ? Tu ne vas pas en manger ? » " Si, je vais encore manger du gâteau ! "

Answer

You'll often hear "et.." being used for "what about...". There's no perfect translation for that English phrase. Sometimes you hear: qu'est-il de ce gâteau? But that's a higher register of language.