To be precise, it’s an indefinite adjective - at least according to my Collins Robert.
Not elided, combined. “de le” becomes “du”; elision would be a word that gets dropped. If someone says “went shopping” instead of “I went shopping”, they’re elliding the subject (note that the first structure is perfectly common usage in some contexts).
Yes, I mistyped, sorry.
** Švejk **you seem to want to argue meaning versus translation which is the crux of the OP. “Je veux de pommes” translates literally to “I want some apples” not “I want apples” …period.
Secondly, in French there are four uses of “de”; as a prepositon, a indefinite article, a partitive article or in conjunction with a definite article.
Since I have been fluently bilingual for over 40 years, personally I do not even bother with French or English.
First, there is no translation without meaning; second, don’t let the fact that the closeness in structure between French and English lets word-by-word translations (as opposed to sentence-based ones) produce something which is generally understandable; third, your last line makes no sense.
I meant that I don’t differentiate or translate between the two. When I’m speaking, reading, or writing in French I’m thinking in French and not translating from English, and vice versa.
Ah, where I come from that’s just how we define bilingüe. You’re bilingual once you think in whichever of two languages you’re using; until you reach that level, you “know” the second language but you’re not bilingual.
It sounds like you may have had the same outstanding French teacher I did!
Did he also say, when a student turned vowels into diphthongs, “Vous parlez commes les vaches Américains”? 
septimus, the intent was kind of the opposite, but my French teacher used to tell us “you’re in the beginner course, I don’t care whether you sound like Spanish cows so long as you speak in French”.
Mooo…
Depends - did you go to a Catholic school in southeastern NH sometime in the mid-1980s?
And just for the absolute sheer unadulterated hell of it, an explanation from Wikipedia.
Nava, elision is also a phonological phenomenon (examples from Wikipedia here). I yield the point that de+le => du is not elision, but will say you’re wrong on the point that elision is only the dropping of words.
No. Public school in California mid-1960’s.
The French teacher I mentioned, deceased now for many years, really was outstanding, with students consistently winning national honors.
But Googling turns up only another award-winning French teacher, herself now approaching retirement, who describes my teacher as her mentor and inspiration.
[hijack] There seems to be a lamentable gap in Googleable info. Lots of minor 19th-century people show up in online bios, newspapers, etc. And many young people, I’ll guess, have huge Internet presences (Facebook etc.). But in between … people once of some importance often show zero hits.
Yes, bilingual and bilingüe are the same.
Not the same man, then. I have circumstantial evidence that my French Honors teacher may still, in fact, be alive.
Comment parlez les vaches Francaises? Disent-ils ‘Meauuuux’?
Meuh.
In the spirit of this thread:
Elles disent “meuh”
This is exactly what I came to post, though my college French was many moons ago.
ETA: having now read the entire thread, it should have been “many moooooooooons ago”
Wow, so nice of you to tell me!
No problem, you seemed to be having a hard time grasping this concept so I’ll give you a recap:
When you reach my level, in English ou en français, vous pouvez communiqué dans les deux langues avec aucune difficulté.
Priceless.
(bolding mine)
Sparky, how’s about stop parading you’re goddamn bilinguality around, all forty years of it - you’re on the internet so no one cares, it is not an argument in and of itself to support the (weak) claim that you are making, and for someone who’s bilingual you make an awful lot of mistakes and are pretty incoherent - and that’s just the English!