Grammar Question

General Discussion
1

Heres’s one for those who are up to speed with grammar in French…

We are naming one of our beers “White Dragon”, it is one of a range of beers that are simply named by the beer type. i.e. Dragon Brun, Dragon Rouge, Dragon D’Or et Dragon Noir.

In the naming convention we have assumed that the gender of the adjective follows the dragon, but then we got into a tizz about whether it should follow the gender of biere itslf. i.e Biere is feminine, so should we name the beers “Dragon Noire”, “Dragon Brune”, “Dragon Blanche” ?

Wesked our neighbour, who is the headmistress of the local school, she was amused that we cared but had no answer for us.

I we had a choice we would go with the feminine form of the adjective…

I thought I woudl raise it here, us Brits do have a sterotype of being sticklers for rules to live up to :slight_smile:

2

The adjective will qualify the unmentioned but understood ‘bière’ [“Qu’est ce que tu bois?”" De la Dragon"] in which case it will be feminine. I would say dragon or rather than dragon d’or as well (like the Lindt lapin or), because the de would link the colour to dragon rather than to bière.
I am surprised a professeur des écoles couldn’t help you.

Bref, you can obv call it what you like, but I would use the f form of the adjective.

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You can also ask your question on Stack Exchange French Language site https://french.stackexchange.com/questions

4

Go contemporary and make it transgender, dragon blanc/he…

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Thanks. That decides it, we will take the f form :laughing:

If it so simple for a school teacher I would hazard a guess that our question was not clear.

Nice bit of fence seating there Jane :wink:

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6

Surely it would depend on whether it is the beer or the dragon that is being described as white.

One is back in the territory of the black ladies bicycle versus the ladie’s black bicycle.

7

Quite so - but if you ask the question, ‘what are you drinking/would you like to drink’, then you will see that the adjective has really to be feminine, qualifying bière. Dragon though a noun is just used metonymically.

If after a few beers the question is ‘what did you say is flying past just now’ then the answer might well be un dragon blanc/noir etc since it is the dragon qua dragon being qualified so the adjective is masculine.

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the word dragon is masculine gender, so in french it should be “dragon blanc”

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Oui mais.

Là, l’adjectif, normalement, qualifie la bière pas le dragon. Tu bois une Hoegaarden blanche ou tu bois un Hoegaarden blanc? Tu bois une Dragon ou tu bois un Dragon?

10

I’m under the impression as an occasional neck-swigger that the label on a bottle of beer has the trade name like Le Squiffé Pigue or Leffe or Hoegaarden or (Utile’s) Lager in bold with the first letter in Capital, and underneath that, in smaller italic lettering, is the beer type e.g Bière Blonde, Bière Blanche, Bière Ambrée, Biére Brune, Bière non filtrée.

Easy peasy?

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11

Véro must be right, as she explains, because the colour relates to the type of beer rather than to the brasserie Dragon.

Though the dragon really ought to be asked to indicate preferred pronouns. It’s a gender minefield otherwise.

(I looked through the brasseries here - couldn’t find nary a one to help. But what a resource!)

Next time I’m down your neck of the woods, I’ll try one … or more …

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12

Part of the problem is how to sex a dragon, I believe. They may even be hermaphroditic?

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13

Are you willing to get close enough to check things out ?? :thinking:

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14

If they breathe fire, then they are female.:smiling_imp:

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15

Exactly, Stella. Especially snow-flake-y types. Dragons like to barbecue their food before eating it, so an apologetic wimp asking what gender of appellation it prefers to be known under is going to really get the creature’s gasoline glands running. Toasted wimp being to a dragon is what toasted marshmallow is to us.

16

Mmm… brings back memories of the camp fire, cub scouts swapping ghost stories (and frightening themselves to death) and Akela (me) handing around toasted marshmallows… :hugs:

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17

Lol…I was born in a year of The Dragon…it’s not all bad…Dragons do have some good points…:grinning:

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18

I like dragons - I’ve got one inked on my leg😎

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