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Quel est votre âge?
Will "quel" change to its feminine form "quelle" when you ask a female? (Quelle est votre âge?) Or will it remain as "quel" whether you ask a male/female the question? Why?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Erwan on
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You accord Quel with the noun that follows not with the gender of the people you're talking about.
So you say Quel est votre âge?
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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on
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Just to provide an example for clarity: if you were to ask Quelle est votre adresse?, you would spell it quelle because adresse is feminine.
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Permalink Reply by Yan Fang on -
Thank you for your reply! So does this rule apply to all cases or is it just for "quel"?
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I'm not quite sure what you mean by "the rule", but in general, agreements are between elements in the sentence and not "automatically" tied to the gender of a particular person being talked to/about.
So for example, in:
Votre fils est tombé.
Votre fille est tombée.
the agreement on "tombé(e)" matches the gender of the noun "fils/fille", not the gender of the interlocutor (i.e. not the gender of the person that "votre" refers to).
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