#french articles

Articles Définis; Le, La (L’), Les

Généralités; (j’aime la musique, le rugby, les animaux. La vie est belle.)

Noms de pays ou de nationalité; (la France, les États-Unis, le Maroc)

Noms + complément de nom; (le prix du pétrole, la veste de Paul.)

Noms de fleuves, de montagnes, d’îles; ( la Seine, le Mississippi

Articles Contractés

(Après une préposition)

à+le= AU

à+les= AUX

je vais au restaurant, aux halles, à l’hôtel

de+le= DU

de+les= DES

je joue du piano, Il s’occupe des dossiers.

Articles Indéfinis; Un, Une, Des

Le mot n’est pas connu

j’ai rencontré... un monsieur, une dame, des ingénieurs.

Exprime l’unité (<un> par opposition à <deux,trois...>)

Il a acheté un disque, deux livres, une revue et trois journaux

Dans la langue soignée, <des> devient <de>, devant un adjectif

Elle a de(s) bonnes idées, de(s) grandes ambitions

~À la forme négative, se transforme en “PAS DE,” “JAIMAIS DE”...

Ils ont des amis

ils n’ont pas d’amis

Nous prenons jamais de sucre

nous ne prenons jamais de sucre

~Négation avec le verbe <être>; pas de changement.

Je ne suis pas une idiote!

French always wants determiners, a grammar nugget that tells about the noun, in front of its nouns, usually, an article will do that job. What is an article? It’s a part of speech that gives us info about a noun. French has three articles which are:

Definite - equivalent to “the”

Indefinite - equivalent to “a/some”

Partitive - equivalent to “some” (also equal to not saying some but just saying verb + noun: I am eating fries = Je mange des frites

Vocabulary

first I make a short list of words that I want to work on. I recommend finding a list of 1000 most common words of your target language and taking from there, or maybe a book or television show. One problem I have with school and themed lists are that many of the words don’t actually come up in casual conversation all that often. It’s great to know “knee” but how often do you actually talk about knees? Therefore take your list from high volume utterances. 

Taking from television is also a great way to accumulate slang into your vocabulary. 

Once you have your list, find translations. I like to color code it like this;

(sorry for the quality) I have my two target languages, and my mother tongue in a ridiculous color that I don’t really want to look at. (it’s easier to read on my card than in this picture.) But if I forget, I could still figure it out easily enough. 

If you have the means to draw out the vocabulary word, this is proven to be more effective than to simply associate it with words of your native language.

All in all, do not make your native language as easy to access as your target language (see image).

Also, it doesn’t help to learn by the phrase. Believe it or not, Pinterest is a great source for already made lists of phrases in most major languages.

Grammar

This is one of the more difficult things to practice without a native speaker present. Dedicate a page of a journal, or word doc to write down the rules of the grammar rule you want to learn. 

Other things you could include on this page

-why it confuses you / what other rule you get it confused with

     ~find the answer and explain it to yourself

-find examples and make up your own

-comparative diagrams of rules if applicable

Application / Writing

The only way to learn is through application!!! Try to krank out a short story or rant that strings your vocab words together and utilizes or target grammar rules.

If you can, have someone check it for you. There are plenty of free apps that connect you to native speakers over chat, (of course be careful,) like HelloTalk.

Reading

This is the easiest to work on by yourself!! There are so many resources online!! Articles/songs/poems/short stories are all at your finger tips.  Try not to start with something too long, so as not to wear yourself out.

My recommendation would be when you find a word or phrase you don’t know, write it down and use context clues to guess what it means. (Write that down too for future vocab list.) Under your guess in a different color, (or just differentiate the two somehow,) write the actual translation. Using pons.eu is my favorite because it gives you every different meaning and explains examples.

After you finish reading, put that paper away with all of the previously unknown  words, and reread the text. See how much you remember of the words you didn’t know and mark the ones you miss again, so that you can work on those more. 

Side note; Songs are great to analyze!!! Especially if they’re songs you listen to often. It introduces you to a more poetic form of literature that is crucial to any language!! Plus you can now sing along and actually know what they’re saying. 

Learning lyrics in other languages has actually helped me when taking tests. When learning conjugations, genders of nouns, or even grammatical cases, this can be super helpful, easy to remember, and fun !!!!

Here are a few news sources that offer many languages

euronews   dw.com   uk.reuters

Keep track of your learning!!

Keep a journal or ongoing word document. 

Things you might include in an entry;

-date

-time spent

-activities finished/attempted

-how satisfactory the time spent was / how much you feel as though you progressed

-(goal for next time)

You don’t have to work on writing/reading/grammar every single day. Just make sure if you teach yourself something, that you put it to use. In addition, if you scoured over a vocab list two weeks ago and have since forgotten some of the words, keep applying them until you feel natural using the word or grammar point.

Revenge of the Articles. So as you know le, la, les, and l’ are used as the  English “the”. Now to the remaining articles, indefinite and partitive articles. These are used for either unspecified objects or unspecified quantities.

Indefinite Articles

Un - a/one

Une - a/one

Des - some

These articles are more self-explanatory as they operate more like the English versions, unlike the definite articles. Indefinite articles go before unknown or unspecified nouns.

Il veux un café ~ He wants a coffee (which coffee, just anyone)

Tu portes une robe ~ You wear a dress (not really referring to any dress, I wasn’t paying attention when you were talking about it earlier)

Nous achetons des pommes ~ We buy (some) apples (no specific apples, just some)

Now to the partitive articles, which are not too hard, but not too easy either.

Partitive Articles

These are tricky cause they’re usually avoided in English and most other European languages (thanks French). Partitives are used for uncountable quantities, they are usually modified with another noun to describe the quantity. You’ll use this to refer to food, sand, grass, water (and most liquids in general) and etcetera. 

Du ~ de + le

De la ~ de + la

De l’ ~ de + l’(vowel/mute h)

Des ~ de + les

They all mean some and the “some” is usually omitted in French.

Je bois de l’eau ~ I drink water

Il mange de la viande ~ He eats meat

Elles vendent du lait ~ They sell milk

Vous avez des fromages ~ You have cheeses

Notice “Il mange de la viande”, here is where French does something explicitly where English doesn't. Here the sentence means “He is eating some meat”, which is an equivalent sentence. But if you replace de la with la, its still he eats meat. But if you remember the definite article lesson, this gives a general statement, thus it means something compared to he eats all kinds of meat. The “la” response would be for if someone was asking someone else if they were a vegan or if they eat meat. De la is not used because its more specific than the “la” in this case (de la refers to some meat he's eating, we know its meat just can't count it - hopefully it's moist chicken. La refers to all meat in general).

Est-il végétarien?                                     Il mange de la viande?

Is he a vegetarian?                                  Is he eating meat?

Non, il mange la viande.                          Oui, il mange un poitrine du poulet.

No, he eats meat.                                    Yes, he is eating a chicken breast.

These articles are dependable, exact, concrete. They are specific, very specific. The definite articles of French are le, la, and les (masculine, feminine, and plural respectively). They are equivalent to the word “the”. Definite articles always denote something specific.

Par Example:

Donne-moi la pomme. ~ Give me the apple.

J’apporte les pain au chocolat. ~ I am bringing the chocolate croissants

See here, a certain apple is being referred to here. The “la” denotes one apple, the apple is feminine, and a specific apple. This apple will go into a bowl. “Les” in the second sentence refers to multiple croissants, but certain ones. The croissants that I have that were bought, the croissants to be eaten for brunch. (Wow, je dois avoir faim).

Le garçon et la chienne sont petits ~ The boy and dog are small.

Here the definite article is on both nouns, yet only of the nouns has the definite article. Well, a determinant is always needed for a noun, and an article is the perfect one for the job because you're referring to a specific dog and a specific boy.

L’Inde est un pays dans l’Asie. ~ India is a country in Asia.

If you’ve forgotten your countries, well guess what? Now you have the names and genders of the countries to memorize. Fun, non? Oh, if you notice there is a contraction between “le” and “la” for “Inde”and “Asie” respectively. This contraction between the definites and a vowel noun make a: l’vowel or l’h muet (mute h, sort of explanatory, it’s just scrambled, comme œufs). Such as “l’homme”~”the man”.

J’aime le the. ~ I love tea. 

Je deteste les mathematiques. ~ I hate math.

Both are less specific than what the definites are for (yet the last statement is so right). Why is this the case? You’re talking about things in a general sense, you’re not referring to a certain kind of tea or a certain subject of math. Just all of it in general. Well because it's too specific for an indefinite article (indefinite more or less say “Gimme something of this category, not anything specific” but here you’re being specific about the concept, just vague enough to where you can still options). Thus the definite article is used. 

Je suis le fantôme le plus sympathique. ~ I am the friendliest ghost.

Well, it’s in Casper’s name, so why not? Here is a superlative, if you forgot what they were, go back to your yearbook. They show the most or the least something is at a certain time, except for the best and worst in general (that will be covered later). The most/least of an adjective will use le plus/le moins, the kindest, the meanest, the darkest, the fastest, etc.

Par Isabelle Hontebeyrie, 19 septembre 2015

Dans ce film biographique tourné à Montréal et ses environs, le réalisateur Ed Zwick (Le dernier samouraï) se penche sur la vie de Bobby Fischer (incarné par Tobey Maguire), champion d'échecs américain, qui défit les Soviétiques en pleine guerre froide.

Et, à l'affiche de cette production, Évelyne Brochu, qui parle de son expérience de tournage et de sa carrière, en pleine effervescence.