[Originally posted on 03/30/14 on the Duolingo French for English speakers forum by xaponeis]
Here I go again!
Hope this can help somebody else because at the beginning I was very confused about the word Ce/Ces. Often, I answered wrong some question about Ce in plural sentences. So, lets start!
First of all, we have to understand that Ce could be a demonstrative adjective or a indefinite demonstrative pronoun:
Demonstrative Adjective
It always comes before a noun and agree with gender and number with the noun its modify:
Ce: masculine singular (this/that)
* Ce garçon est petit
Cet: masculine singular before vowel or mute H (this/that)
* Cet homme est grand
Cette: feminine singular (this/that)
* Cette fille est jolie
Ces: masculine/feminine plural (these/that)
Ces hommes sont grands
Ces femmes sont belles
Indefinite Demonstrative Pronoun
It refers to a noun previosly mentioned, it is impersonal and unvariable. Does not change acordding with gender ou number. Mainly used with the verb être and means it or this.
- C’est la vie
- C’est important
THE ANSWER
Now answering the title question, the correct form is: Ce sont les garçons
– in this case ce is used to refer something/someone mentioned before, and we can also realize that it is not followed by a noun. It would be WRONG to say Ces sont … because the PRONOUN Ce is UNVARIABLE.
But we could say something like this: Ces garçons sont petits
– in this case Ces is an ADJECTIVE and it is modified by the noun garçons, so it agrees in gender and number with it.
Thats it! Hope this was clear enough!
À bientôt!
Source: French.about and French.about
Tip 1: Des vs De
Tip 2: De vs Des/Un/Du/De la
Tip 3: Ce sont or Ces sont
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Selected comments on original post
Great! I just wrote a little article about that yesterday: Having trouble with ce, ça, and cette
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