Nelle

Ok, I have a probably really dumb question. But first let me explain why I am asking this. I'm teaching English in China and I took French for two semesters (I hardly know anything.) My Chinese boss (who took French for three semesters) came up to me today and asked me why his French book said the following:

ll ya 57% de femmes, 43% des femmes travaillent.

(At least I think that is what he said it said.)

He wanted to know why is it "de" in the first part of the sentence, but "des" in the second part of the sentence?

I really want to give him an answer.
Thanks so much.

The_FD

One of the most intricate and hard to handle thing in french are pronouns... and here is a big one.

Simply I would say that the first "de" stands in a general case Women in general (so no specic pronoun like "les")
while in the second part "des" (de+les combined) goes with the fact that you are talking of the 57% you just talked about. which is not a general case but concerns given women.

hope that helps
and I am sure that some grammar specialists around will give a much clearer explanation than me

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phytoplancton

désolé je ne parle pas assez bien l'anglais, je vais le dire en français:

Dans le premier cas "il y a 57% de femmes": Le tout dont on extrait les 57 % est l'humanité ou quelque chose dans le genre. "femmes" est ce qui constitue les 57%.

Dans le deuxième cas, "femmes" est le tout dont on extrait les 43% qui travaillent.
Je sais pas si c'est assez clair, quelqu'un arrivera sûrement à mieux l'expliquer en anglais