1 Noun and Articles
What is a noun?
A noun is a word that can be the name of a person, an animal, place, thing, event, or an idea. Example: professor, dog, Paris, lamp, marriage, poverty
Masculine / Feminine
Nouns in French have a gender. They can be masculine or feminine. If you’ve studied something like Spanish, German, or even Arabic, you’ll know that gender is very much a thing.
The gender of a word in French can sometimes be identified by its ending. The best place to start with this rule is that most feminine nouns in French end in ‘e’.
YouTube : Understand gender in French
Singular / Plural
As well as being masculine or feminine, a French noun will also be singular or plural. When a word refers ton one person or thing, it is said to be singular; when it refers to more than one, it is plural. Here, the French language is very similar to English in that “-s” is a common way of making a noun plural. Note, however, that the s is not pronounced.
Then you have the exceptions, which tend to follow a few guidelines. The noun endings influence how a plural form is constructed:
Most nouns ending in –eau or -eu add an –x in the plural.
| Singular | Plural |
| chapeau | chapeaux |
| jeu | jeux |
What are articles?
An article is a word placed before a noun to show whether the noun refers to a particular person, animal, place, thing, event, or idea, or whether the noun refers to an unspecified person, thing, or idea. Articles are words such as ‘the’, ‘a’ and ‘an’.
Example:
- I have the dictionary > a specified dictionary
- I have a dictionary > an unspecified dictionary
Definite Articles / Indefinite Articles
The definite articles indicates that the speaker is referring to either a specific noun or to a class of nouns in a general sense. The English definite article, the, has four equivalent forms in French: la, le, l’ and les, depending on the gender and number of the noun as well as what letter it begins with.
Please note, le or la change to l’ before a noun beginning in a vowel or an h (the h is silent in French).
| Gender | Singular | Plural |
|---|---|---|
| Masculine | le livre
l’étudiant |
les livres
les étudiants |
| Feminine | la classe
l’étudiante |
les classes
les étudiantes |
The indefinite article indicates that the speaker is referring to either an unspecific noun or to one/some of something. In English we have the indefinite article a and an. In the plural we say eithersome, any or nothing at all. In French, you choose from un, une and des, depending on whether the noun is masculine or feminine, and singular or plural.
| Gender | Singular | Plural |
|---|---|---|
| Masculine | un livre | des livres |
| Feminine | une craie | des craies |
Tip: When learning new vocabulary, make your vocabulary lists with a definite or indefinite article for each noun. This will help you learn the gender of each noun along with the word itself