If you plan to travel to a French-speaking country, you’re going to need nouns to ask for what you need or want. Otherwise, the people you meet will not have a clue what you’re saying.
However, it’s also important to make sure that you’re using nouns correctly. In French as in English, nouns appear after an article—a word that means a or the. In a conversation, you might ask about the hotel, gush over a cute French dog, or marvel at the City of Lights, a.k.a. Paris). In English, the word a is an indefinite article—it indicates that the noun is any one of a general group--any dog or any city. The word the is a definite article—it indicates that the nouns is specific or definite—the particular dog or the exact city. In English, there is just one definite article—the. In French, there are three: "the" can be translated as either "le", "la" or "les".
Let's Watch
How can you tell which definite article to use? Watch this video to find out the difference between le and la.
Bonjour, je m’appelle Sophie! Today we’re going to talk about definite articles in French. Vous êtes prêts? On y va! Let’s go!
In English, the definite article is the. In French, definite articles are little more complicated. First of all, there’s more than one. To decide which definite article to use in French, you have to consider three things:
1.The noun’s gender
2.The first letter of the noun, and
3.The noun’s number (singular or plural)
Right now, we’re going to focus on the first two: the noun’s gender and its first letter.
If a noun is masculine, you should use the article “le”
as in le garçon.
Try saying the masculine definite article out loud: Le.
Le chien.
Le chat.
Très bien! On continue!
If a noun is feminine, you use “la”:
La fille
Practice saying that. La. La femme. La personne. Super! One more definite article to go!
If a noun starts with a vowel or a silent h, you use the letter l followed by an apostrophe.
L’étudiant l’étudiante
l’homme
See, it works with both masculine and feminine nouns! But because the noun starts with a vowel, we use l and an apostrophe.
Let’s practice. Repeat after me. L’ami. L’homme. Fantastique! You’ve got it!
Here’s aTip: All French nouns have a gender, even inanimate objects. When learning new vocabulary, be sure to include a definite article for each noun on your vocabulary list. This will help you learn the gender of each noun along with the word itself. This is important because articles (as well as adjectives, pronouns, and just about everything else) change to agree with the gender of the noun.
In this lesson, you learned about the singular definite articles le, la, and l apostrophe. The French definite articles all translate to “the” in English. Because all nouns in French have a gender, learn new nouns with their article.
Bon travail! À bientôt!
Question
Why is it important to know the gender of a noun?
You’ll need to choose other parts of speech (articles, pronouns, adjectives) based on the noun’s gender.
