In the sentence: ¨Je vais acheter des pommes de terre et des patates douces pour préparer deux types de purée.¨, I used ¨purées¨ to match the plural established by ¨types¨.
Is ¨purée¨ always a singular noun?
In the sentence: ¨Je vais acheter des pommes de terre et des patates douces pour préparer deux types de purée.¨, I used ¨purées¨ to match the plural established by ¨types¨.
Is ¨purée¨ always a singular noun?
Bonjour Herb,
You are correct! "Purées" has now been added as part of the correct answers.
Having looked at what L'Académie française recommends, we found out that there isn't a "rule" as both are accepted:
deux types de purées -> there are 2 distinctive mash
deux types de purées -> not countable / talking about the dish
See here:
Nombre du complément d’un nom collectif
sorte de, type de, forme de + singulier/pluriel
I hope this is helpful.
Bonne journée !
I think this is the same as in English - I wouldn’t say ‘2 types of purées’, or for another example ‘I saw 2 types of cars’, in English either.
It refers to 2 versions of one thing. An exception could be when the ‘one thing’ is usually or invariably referred to in the plural.
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