French Grammar - Lesson 1

In this French grammar, French words are written in pink and the English words to which they correspond in blue. It is important that you make sure that you have these words written in your French vocabulary book.

This grammar section contains sections §1 to §6. In it, you will learn about:

1. The strange lines and squiggles added to some French letters of the alphabet.
2. The concept of all nouns being masculine or feminine in French.
3. The definite article (the word "the").
4. Forming the plurals of French nouns.
5. The indefinite article (the word "a" or "an")
6. Some common prepositions.

§1 Foreign Accents

Describe it	What it looks like:	What's it called?	An example word
A line sloping upwards, placed on a letter 'e'. It is pronounced "ay" as in 'hay'.	é	E acute	épée (sword)
A line sloping downwards placed on an 'e' or an 'a'. It is pronounced "air" as in 'hair'.	è, à	E grave, A grave	père (father), déjà (already)
A little hook underneath a 'c' which makes it sound like 's'	ç	C cidilla	garçon (boy, waiter)
A small hat over a vowel	â, ê, ô	circumflex	château (castle), bête (silly)

§2 Masculine and Feminine

Here are some examples of masculine words and feminine words. I have given the English word and the French word.

There is no alternative to learning which nouns are masculine in French and which are feminine, but there is a rule of thumb which will help:

The rule doesn't always work, but it is a pretty good one. If you come across a noun which ends in E, then you can be pretty sure that it is feminine. If you come across a noun ending in some other letter, you can be pretty sure that it's masculine.

§3 The Definite Article (The)

• For single masculine nouns, use the word le (pronounced as in the first part of the word "lurk").
• For single feminine nouns, use the word la (pronounced as in the first part of the word "latch").
• Before a vowel or a letter H (which are not pronounced in French at the start of a word), both le and la are reduced to l'. An example is the masculine word homme (man). This word is pronounced omme so "the man" would be l'homme rather than le homme. It's similar with the feminine word auto (car). "The car" in French translates to l'auto.
• The word "the" is always les (pronounced "lay") in the plural. This applies, whether the word starts with a consonant, a vowel or whatever. If the word starts with a vowel or H, then les is pronounced "lez", so les autos (the cars) would be pronounced "lez autos"

Here is a summary of the four words for "the";

Here are some examples. Make sure you write them in your vocabulary book. Just write down the singular form (not the plural), and in the case where the word l' is used, write down whether the word is masculine or feminine.

Masculine	Feminine
l'arbre (the tree) les arbres (the trees) le livre (the book) les livres (the books)	l'allée (the pathway) les allées (the pathways) la tante (the aunt) les tantes (the aunts)

§4 Forming the plurals of nouns

• The plural of most nouns is formed by adding an -s as in English:

  le garçon	les garçons	la femme	les femmes
  l'ordinateur	les ordinateurs	la maison	les maisons
  le chat	les chats	l'allée	les allées

• Some nouns already end in -s. In this case, don't add another -s. The same thing applies if the noun ends in -x. In both cases, the plural is the same as the singular.

  le fils (the son)	les fils (the sons)	la souris	les souris
  le choux (the cabbage)		les choux

• If a noun ends in -u, just add a letter x. The x isn't pronounced. The letters -eux at the end of a word are pronounced "ur" (as in "fur"), so cheveux is pronounced "chevur". Similarly, -aux at the end of a word is pronounced "oh", so bateaux is pronounced "battoh".

  le cheveu (the hair - on your head!)	les cheveux (the hairs)
  le bateau (the boat)	les bateaux (the boats)
  le château (the castle)	les châteaux (the castles)

• A few nouns end in -al. This changes to -aux (pronounced "oh") in the plural:

  le cheval (the horse)	les chevaux (the horses) - prononced "shevoh"
  le journal (the newspaper)	les journaux (the newspapers) - pronounced "joornoh"

• Unlike English, French only has one noun that is completely irregular in the plural, and here it is:

  l'oeil (the eye) - pronounced "oy"

  les yeux (the eyes) - pronounced "yur"

§5 The Indefinite Article (A, an)

There is no plural word for un or une, of course, just as there isn't a plural for "a" or "an" in English. The nearest we have to a plural is the word des (pronounced "day") which means "some":

§6 Prepositions

When combined with the word "est" (meaning "is") and "sont" (meaning "are"), you can start to construct some proper sentences:

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