In French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

, article

Article (grammar)

An article is a word that combines with a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun. Articles specify the grammatical definiteness of the noun, in some languages extending to volume or numerical scope. The articles in the English language are the and a/an, and some...

s and determiners are required on almost every common noun, much more so than in English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

. They are inflected

Inflection

In grammar, inflection or inflexion is the modification of a word to express different grammatical categories such as tense, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, aspect, person, number, gender and case...

 to agree in gender

Grammatical gender

Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...

 (masculine or feminine) and number

Grammatical number

In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....

 (singular or plural) with the noun they determine, though most have only one plural form (for masculine and feminine). Many also often change form when the word that follows them begins with a vowel sound.

While articles are actually a subclass of determiners (and determiners are in turn a subclass of adjectives) they are generally treated separately; thus, they are treated separately here as well.

Articles

French has three articles: a definite article

Definite Article

Definite Article is the title of British comedian Eddie Izzard's 1996 performance released on VHS. It was recorded on different nights at the Shaftesbury Theatre...

, corresponding in many cases to English the; an indefinite article, corresponding to English a/an; and a partitive

Partitive

In linguistics, the partitive is a word, phrase, or case that divides something into parts. For example, in the English sentence I'll have some coffee, some is a partitive determiner because it makes the noun phrase some coffee refer to a subset of all coffee...

 article, used roughly like some in English .

The definite article

The French definite article is analogous to the English definite article the. Like the, the French definite article is used with a noun referring to a specific item when both the speaker and the audience know what the item is; so, « J'ai cassé la chaise rouge » ("I broke the red chair"). Unlike the, the French definite article is also used with mass noun

Mass noun

In linguistics, a mass noun is a noun that refers to some entity as an undifferentiated unit rather than as something with discrete subsets. Non-count nouns are best identified by their syntactic properties, and especially in contrast with count nouns. The semantics of mass nouns are highly...

s and plural nouns with generic interpretation, and with abstract nouns. For example:

• « J'aime le lait. » ("I like milk.")
• « J'aime les romans. » ("I like novels.")
• « Le capitalisme a transformé ce pays. » ("Capitalism has transformed this country.")

The definite article takes the following forms:

	singular		plural
	before consonant	before vowel or mute h1
masculine	le2	l	les2
feminine	la

1. See Elision (French)
   Elision (French)
   In French, elision refers to the suppression of a final unstressed vowel immediately before another word beginning with a vowel. The term also refers to the orthographic convention by which the deletion of a vowel is reflected in writing, and indicated with an apostrophe.- Written French :In...
   
   .
2. The prepositions à (to, at) and de (of, from) contract with the forms le and les to form au, du, aux, and des, respectively.

The indefinite article

The French indefinite article is analogous to the English indefinite article a/an. Like a/an, the French indefinite article is used with a noun referring to a non-specific item, or to a specific item when the speaker and audience do not both know what the item is; so, « J'ai cassé une chaise rouge » ("I broke a red chair"). Unlike a/an, the French indefinite article has a plural form, often translated as some but usually simply omitted in English; so, « Il y a des livres là-bas » ("There are some books over there." or "There are books over there").

The indefinite article takes the following forms:

	singular	plural
masculine	un	des
feminine	une

1. The indefinite article becomes de (or d' if before a vowel) after a negative verb other than être: « Je n'ai pas de livre », "I do not have a or any book." This use is related to expressions of quantity; see below.
2. The plural form des is normally reduced to de (or d' if before a vowel) when it applies to a noun preceded by an adjective: « de nombreux livres » (many books), « d'autres livres » (other books) but « des livres reliés » (bound books).
3. Unlike in English the article is dropped when specifying someone's occupation: « ma soeur est avocat. » "My sister is a lawyer."

The partitive article

The French partitive article is often translated as some, but often simply omitted in English. It is used to indicate an indefinite portion of something uncountable, or an indefinite number of something countable: « J'ai du café » ("I have some coffee." or simply "I have coffee.").

The partitive article takes the following forms:

	singular		plural
	before consonant	before vowel or mute h1
masculine	du	de l	des
feminine	de la

1. See Elision (French)
   Elision (French)
   In French, elision refers to the suppression of a final unstressed vowel immediately before another word beginning with a vowel. The term also refers to the orthographic convention by which the deletion of a vowel is reflected in writing, and indicated with an apostrophe.- Written French :In...
   
   .
2. Like the indefinite article, the partitive article becomes de (or d' if before a vowel) after a negative verb other than être and before a plural noun preceded by an adjective.

Notice that except after a negative verb, the partitive article is formed by combining the preposition de (of, from) with the definite article. Also note that in the plural, and after a negative verb, the indefinite and partitive articles take the same form; this makes sense, as there is no clear difference in meaning in these cases. (Some grammarians actually classify des as either exclusively indefinite or exclusively partitive, and say that the other article has no plural form. This does not affect the interpreted meaning of des.)

Determiners

Determiners, like other adjectives, agree in gender and number with the noun they modify (or, in this case, determine).

Possessive determiners

The possessive determiners (also called possessive adjectives or, misleadingly, possessive pronouns; analogous to English my, their, etc.) are used to indicate the possessor of the noun they determine. They lexically mark the person and number of the possessor, and are inflected to agree with their noun in gender and number. While English distinguishes between masculine and feminine singular possessors (his vs. her), French does not. As in English, possessive determiners do not necessarily express true possession in the sense of ownership.

Their forms are as follows:

			| possessed
			singular	plural
possessor	| first person	singular	mon, ma1	mes
		plural	notre	nos
	second person	singular	ton, ta1	tes
		plural	votre	vos
	third person	singular	son, sa1	ses
		plural	leur	leurs

1. The forms mon, ton, and son are used with masculine nouns, or before vowels or mute h's; the forms ma, ta, and sa are used before consonants with feminine nouns.

Demonstrative determiners

	singular	plural
masculine	ce cet (before vowel and mute h)	ces
feminine	cette

The demonstrative determiners (or demonstrative adjectives) can mean either this or that, these or those. To be more precise or to avoid ambiguity, -ci or -là can be inserted after the noun:

• cet homme-ci "this man"
• cet homme-là "that man"

Interrogative determiners

The interrogative determiner quel means which or what. It agrees in gender and number with the noun it modifies:

	singular	plural
masculine	quel	quels
feminine	quelle	quelles

Examples: quel train, quelle chaise, quels hommes, and quelles classes.

Quel can be used as an exclamation.

• « Quel film ! » (What a movie!)
• « Quelle gentillesse ! » (What kindness!)

Quantifiers

A quantifier is a determiner that quantifies its noun, like English "some" and "many." In French, as in English, quantifiers constitute an open word class

Open class (linguistics)

In linguistics, a word class may be either an open class or a closed class. Open classes accept the addition of new morphemes , through such processes as compounding, derivation, inflection, coining, and borrowing; closed classes generally do not....

, unlike most other kinds of determiners. In French, most quantifiers are formed using a noun or adverb of quantity and the preposition de (d' when before a vowel).

Quantifiers formed with a noun of quantity and the preposition de include the following:

• des tas de ("lots of")
• trois kilogrammes de ("three kilograms of")
• une bouchée de ("a mouthful of")
• une douzaine de ("a dozen (of)")

Quantifiers formed with an adverb of quantity and the preposition de include the following:

• beaucoup de ("a lot of")
• un peu de ("a little," "a few")
• peu de ("little," "few")
• assez de, suffisamment de ("enough of")
• pas de ("no," "not any")

Other quantifiers include:

• bien + the partitive article ("much" or "many")
• quelque(s) ("some")
• the cardinal numbers (73, 4.2, and so on)