One for all you French speakers

[GeForce]

Morning all,

In english, I believe you can have multiple alternatives to something:
"There were no corn flakes, but there were other alternatives."

I'm led to believe that in French "un alternatif" represents the only other choice, ie. "il y a quelques alternatifs" is incorrect grammar.
"Il n'y avait pas du corn flakes. Donc, j'ai dû manger l'alternatif: du pain grillé."

Can somebody confirm whether this is true?

I don't have a French dictionary to hand at the moment. Looking on wordreference.com, I get the following:

alternative
1. noun (from two) alternative f, autre possibilité f;
(from several) possibilité f;
to have no ~ ne pas avoir le choix.

The "from two" bit seems to indicate that I'm correct in thinking "multiple alternatives" are not permitted by French grammar rules.

TIA

 

[D.P.]

I have a hunch that this is also correct, in that "alteratif" usually only refers to a singular alternative. However, you can just say "autre possibilités" which can refer to multiple alterntives. But my French sucks.

 

[El Gringo]

As far as I know, and having spoken it for the past 20 years, it can be used plurally, it certainly wouldn´t be frowned upon orally.

 

[OLDPHART]

"Gid Moaning" in my best french accsent to you.