Quote:
Originally Posted by mbirming
Hi all,
I am currently reading Pierre Loti's "Pecheur d'Islande" and have a question about the grammar in one of the sentences...
"Ayant essuyé leurs larmes, arrangé leurs cheveux, épousseté le salpêtre et la poussière des dalles sur leur jupon à l'endroit des genoux, elles s'en allèrent sans plus rien se dire, par des chemins différents."
Why is it that "leurs larmes" and "leurs cheveux" are plural, but "leur jupon" is singular?
Thanks for any insight!
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Aaah, finally I can be of any help on that forum !!!
I'm happy !
Actually, that's rather simple. It's written "leur jupon" because each character the writer is talking about has only one skirt. However, each of them have to wipe many tears and have "many hair" (in French, "the hair" is "les cheveux", always a plural, so...).
"Leur" often means that many people (for instance) have the same thing. When they have more than one of this thing, you just have to write "leurs".
Let me know if it's still not clear, I'll try to find a better way to explain it.
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