"je bois du lait" means I am drinking some milk, ie an undefined quantity of something I cannot count.
In French, there is a specific construction for that: preposition "de" + definite article "le/la"
-masculine: du lait (contraction of de+le)
-feminine: de la soupe
-masculine: de l'alcool (elision of "le" because alcool starts with a vowel)
- feminine: de l'eau (elision "la" because eau starts with a vowel)
"de" is simply a particle meaning "of", or "from", it's not the use there.
You have to put the partitive article, and it's always de+ definite article.
There's an exception with "du" (because it's the contraction of de+le) and with "des" (because it's the contraction of de+les)
Remember: "de" alone is a particle, not an article, to mean the partitive article, you need the whole block "de"+definite article, or the contracted forms.
the milk = le lait
Whenever the English sentence has "the", the French sentence will use "le", "la", "l' " or "les" depending on the noun used:
- the milk = le lait (masculine singular)
- the beer = la bière (feminine singular)
- the water = l'eau (feminine singular, noun starting with a vowel sound)
- the alcohol = l'alcool (masculine singular, noun starting with a vowel sound)
- the drinks and the glasses = les boissons (feminine plural) et les verres (masculine plural)
The latest change to your web interface is broken. Needed items are off the screen when the browser window maximized and only come back on the screen as one slowly decreases the size of the screen. Then, if you go smaller, needed items are off the screen again. Some times there is a scroll bar to reach items, and sometimes its not present. Please fix. I use firefox on a laptop computer.
Has anyone else experienced these issues. (may 31, 2019)