Learn French: French Articles

French Articles

Definite Articles:

French Articles must agree in gender and number with their nouns, so looking at the definite articles for example, to express “the” in French you need to know what gender and number the noun is using, to say “the house” you need to figure out its gender, “house/ maison” in French for some reason is feminine, and of course we’re talking here only about one house (singular), so the proper article to use is “la”, the house = la maison.

Milk is masculine in French, to say “the milk” we need to use the definite article for masculine/singular “le” with “lait/ milk” we get “le lait”

Sometimes you may need to use the definite article (l’) instead of (le/ la) when the noun starts with a vowel, like (a, e, o, u, h…), the school: l’école.

Finally to form the definite article in the plural we use “les”, “the kings = les rois”.

Note that French sometimes uses the articles in places where English don’t. for example in English you can simply say “kings are ….” without “the” but in French you have to use the definite article “les” with the word “rois = kings” les rois …”. Same thing with “milk”…you can say “milk is very rich in calcium” but in French you have to use the “le” before “lait” “le lait est très riche en calcium”.

Indefinite Articles:

French indefinite articles are gender/number sensitive as well, so to express “a” in French you need to know what gender and number the noun is using, to say “a house” you need to figure out its gender, “house/ maison” in French is feminine, and we’re talking here only about one house (singular), so the proper article to use is “une”, a house = une maison.

“Computer” in French is masculine, to say “a computer” we need to use the indefinite article for masculine/singular “un” with “ordinateur” we get “un ordinateur”.

Note, unlike English, where you don’t use the indefinite article in the plural, French does use it in the plural with the expression “les”, the closest equivalent in English is “some”, (I have a pencil, an eraser, and (some) books = j’ai un crayon, une gomme, et des livres”.

Partitive Articles:

The partitive in French is used to indicate a part of a whole, since it’s not used in English the closest would be “some” or “a piece of”,

So to say “I have (some) meat, oil, and (some) bread” you need to use the proper partitive articles: “J’ai de la viande, de l'huile, et du pain”.

This is an overview of the French articles:

Demonstrative Articles:

Again French demonstrative articles have to agree in gender and number with the noun they precede.

In French you don’t really have to specify if something is near (this) or far (that), they’re all understood by context, but still in some cases you need to, when there some confusion, so the solution is to add -ci (here) and -là (there) after the noun. Below is a table showing the exact equivalent, which you need to use when you think there is a need for it: