3: The, a, some

Sunday morning "brocantes"

Bonjour mes amis!

Every Sunday morning, when staying in Normandy, we pay a visit to a "brocante" in a nearby village. The locations change every week (apparently each village is allocated one slot per year, so you have to track them down for the particular week of your holiday). The word "brocante" means 'second-hand' and these events involve local people clearing out their attics and children's toy cupboards and selling off unwanted items. Prices are extremely low and there is always something of interest to bring home.

The pictures below show Ken and Sheila attending a brocante in a forest near Fervaques. The second snap I have named, 'le voleur de Fervaques" (the thief of Fervaques) on the grounds that Ken is looking distinctly shifty. In his hand is a lovely wooden miniature chest, which we polished up and gave to our daughter Rosie to display her jewellery (Rosie is, amongst other things, a designer and maker of handmade jewellery).

Sheila and Ken at a brocante near Fervaques 

Le 'voleur' de Fervaques

                       

(By the way, Ken has asked me to make it clear that he is not actually stealing this chest – Ken is a professional actor and and sometimes likes giving us a performance!)

Ken and Sheila are both working hard on the blog and have just watched the videos for Post 2. In his usual, understated way, Ken kindly pointed out a small error in the video, “Teaching my wife French: French words that you already know". I've put a note up about this in Comments to the video on YouTube. [LINK]

Just get on with it…

Anyway, on with the show.

Recently, Sheila was translating some short sentences into French. One read, "She loves apples." which she translated, logically enough, as, "Elle aime pommes." Although this is a literal translation, it is not correct. The French don't normally leave a noun like "pommes" floating on its own like this without some other word in front of it. Hence this post which explains the rules for "the", "a" (respectively, the definite and indefinite articles) and "some".

She pen, he pencil

une plume (a pen - feminine)  










un crayon (a pencil – masculine)
               

If you look at a pen and a pencil, it's hard to think of these objects as being gendered. But, for reasons that I've never understood, the French language has chosen to gender all its nouns. This applies whether or not they are living breathing mammals (yes, sensible enough), plants (mmm, not sure?), inanimate objects (steady now…), or abstract concepts like "opinion", "reason", "gender" and so on (wow – beam me up, Scotty!).

The English word, "the" is known as the definite article, whereas “a" is referred to as the indefinite article. The reason for this terminology is that if you are talking about, say, "the chair" you are being specific and definite about a particular chair, hence the word “the" is the definite article. To talk about “a chair", on the other hand, it is not a reference to a particular chair but rather to a general, indefinite one, hence the word “a" is referred to as the indefinite article. 

The definite article, "the"

Just as all French nouns are distinguished by gender, so too are the corresponding articles that go in front of them. Masculine definite articles are written as "le" and feminine as "la". Below are some examples of "le" and "la" for nouns describing parts of the body.

Examples of masculine nouns:

English	French
the arm	le bra [bra]
the knee	le genou [juhnoo]
the face	le visage [veezaj]
the nose	le nez [nay]
the stomach	l'estomac [estoma]

Incidentally, when I showed a previous draft of this post to Sheila, her immediate response was that she was put off reading it by being unable to pronounce some of these words. At her suggestion, therefore, I've included a pronunciation aid in red alongside my first use of the French words in question.

As you can see from the final example above, the only complication is where the noun in question starts with a vowel, in which case the definite article is written as l apostrophe (l').  For these nouns, it will not be immediately obvious whether their gender is masculine or feminine.

Examples of feminine nouns:

English	French
the head	la tête [tet]
the mouth	la bouche [boosh]
the tooth	la dent [don]
the hand	la main [man]
the ear	l'oreille [oray]

As was the case with the final example of masculine nouns (estomac), the final example in this list of feminine nouns (oreille) also starts with a vowel so "la" is also reduced to "l'".

The indefinite article, "a"

For masculine nouns, the indefinite article is "un" – pronounced [an].

Examples:

English	French
an arm	un bra
a knee	un genou
a face	un visage
a nose	un nez
a stomach	un estomac

For feminine nouns, simply add "e" to the "un" to get "une" – pronounced [oon].

Examples:

English	French
a head	une tête
a mouth	une bouche
a tooth	une dent
a hand	une main
an ear	une oreille

It can be hard to remember all this vocabulary. Sheila commented that she finds it easy to remember "le dent", meaning "the tooth" by thinking about the word dandelion, which derives from the French "dent de lion" (lion's tooth), and refers to its coarsely-toothed leaves. 

Some (used for portions)

In English, when asking for a portion of butter, you might say, 'May I have some butter?' This is using "some" to indicate a portion. I'll look shortly at a different use of "some", which is for plurals.

For portions, sometimes, the word "some" is omitted and you might shorten the sentence above to, 'May I have butter?' As was mentioned earlier, this omission of "some" is not allowed in French – a noun can't normally be left to float on its own. When used to indicate a portion of something, the noun must be preceded by 'of the'. For masculine nouns this is "du" and for feminine nouns, "de la". A couple of example should make this clearer.

(Note that the word buerre (butter) is masculine and ice cream (glace) is feminine.)

English	French
May I have some butter?	Puis-je avoir du buerre?
May I have some ice cream?	Puis-je avoir de la glace?
May I have butter?	Puis-je avoir du buerre?
May I have ice cream?	Puis-je avoir de la glace?

Plurals

In English, the definite article "the" remains unchanged, whether the noun in question is singular or plural. For example, we can say "the arm" or "the arms" but either way the "the" is the same.

In French, for plural nouns, both the "le" (masculine) and "la" (feminine) become "les" – pronounced [lay].

Examples:

English	French
Singular              Plural	Singular              Plural
the head     the heads	la tête               les têtes
the knee     the knees	le genou        les genoux
the tooth      the teeth	la dent             les dents
the hand     the hands	la main            les mains
the face  the faces	le visage       les visages

A note on pronunciation: All of these plural nouns are pronounced just the same as the singular form – for example, "têtes" is pronounced [tet], just like " tête".

So far so simple. What about plurals of the indefinite article, "a". In English, we simply drop the article altogether, so the plural of "a dog" becomes "dogs", the plural of "a tree" becomes "trees", and so on.

This is NOT how it works in French. Instead, the plural of "un" is "des". You can think of "des" as meaning "some", although in English this word is usually unspoken.

Examples:

English	French
Singular           Plural	Singular              Plural
a head             heads	une tête           des têtes
a knee              knees	un genou      des genoux
a tooth               teeth	une dent         des dents
a hand             hands	une main         des mains
a face               faces	un visage       des visages

A note on pronunciation: "des" is pronounced [day]. 

So how do you remember the gender of French nouns?

It seems that there are certain patterns and guidelines for linking French nouns to their gender but this information is beyond my area of expertise. I turned to Ken for help on this question and he turned to Michel Thomas.

Ken’s gems...

According to Michel Thomas: 1. There are approximately 1,200 nouns in English and in French ending in -ion that take the feminine form (la, une): e.g. the decision/ la décision. 2.  Nouns in English ending in -ty, end with -té in French and are feminine: e.g. the capacity/ la capacité.

Certainly, over time, you do start to pick up that it is la pomme (the apple) but le banane (the banana), la vache (the cow) but le cheval (the horse), and so on. In general, when I am unsure, I tend to go with Sheila's method, which is to say these definite or indefinite articles rather quickly and with confidence. Just hope that the French listener will believe that you said it correctly because, to quote Paul Simon, "a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest".

Sheila's wrinkles

Having read Ken's gems for the last two posts, Sheila was starting to feel that she was missing out. She has asked for a feature in the blog where she can contribute her own special wisdom. For this spot she has chosen the title 'Sheila's Wrinkles' (luckily this was her suggestion, not mine!) and so from next week you will be able to read both of these features!

Postscript on "le" and "la"

A few years ago, I was looking for French mustard in a small local supermarché. “Excusez moi. Avez vous le moutard?”, I asked the young mademoiselle. Answer came there none – just giggles. I asked her friend the same question, " Avez vous le moutard?”. Many more giggles.

What I hadn't realized was that there are two very similar words in French. The word for mustard is the feminine word, ‘la moutarde’ (note the "la" and also that it ends with the vowel (an "e") which means that the penultimate letter is pronounced [la mootard]. I was offering a masculine word (starting with "le") and, without a final vowel, the "d" is silent [le mootaar]. I only discovered later that what I was asking for  was 'the little rascal'.

Finally, what about Sheila's dodgy translation of, "she loves apples", that inspired this post? She now knows that the correct French translation is, "elle aime des pommes".

Video

To support this post I’ve put up on Youtube another short video explaining "le/la", "un/une" and "des".  

Here is the link: Teaching my wife French: The, a, some.

Au revoir.