[Originally posted on 12/04/18 on the Duolingo French for English speakers forum by CommeuneTexane]
Articles
Articles (e.g. “the” or “a”) provide context for a noun. In English, articles may be omitted, but French nouns almost always have an article. French has three types of articles:
- Definite articles (“the”) are used with specific nouns that are known to the speakers, as in English, but also to indicate the general sense of a noun, unlike in English.
- Indefinite articles (“a”/”an”) are used for countable nouns that are unspecified or unknown to the speakers.
- Partitive articles (“some”/”any”) indicate a quantity of something uncountable.
Articles have multiple forms, as provided in this table:
| Article | Masculine | Feminine | Plural | Example |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Definite | le/l’ | la/l’ | les | le chat — the cat |
| Indefinite | un | une | des | une femme — a woman |
| Partitive | du/de l’ | de la/de l’ | de l‘eau — (some) water |
It is critical to understand that articles must agree with their nouns in both gender and number. For instance, le femme is incorrect. It must be la femme because la is feminine and singular, just like femme.
Elisions
Le and la become just l’ if they’re followed by a vowel sound. This is an example of elision, which is the removal of a vowel sound in order to prevent consecutive vowel sounds and make pronunciation easier. Elisions are mandatory—for instance, je aime is incorrect. It must be j’aime.
These other one-syllable words can also elide: je, me, te, se, de, ce, ne, and que. Tu can also be elided in casual speech, but not in writing (including on Duolingo).
Contractions
In a contraction, two words combine to form one shortened word. For instance, the partitive article du is a contraction of the preposition de with le.
- du pain — (some) bread
However, since du can create vowel conflicts, when it would appear in front of a vowel sound, it takes the elided de l’ form instead. This is also the case for de la.
- de l’ananas [masc.] — (some) pineapple
- de l’eau [fem.] — (some) water
Words Beginning with H
The letter H is always mute (silent) in French, but when H starts a word, it can act as a consonant (aspirate) or vowel (non-aspirate). For example, the H in homme acts as a vowel. This means that “the man” must be written as l’homme.
Conversely, an aspirate H doesn’t participate in elisions or liaisons (which you’ll learn about soon). It’s usually found at the beginning of loanwords from other languages. For instance, “the hero” is le héros. Pay attention to this when learning new vocabulary.
Important: If you find any errors in the Tips and Notes, have questions related to the grammar points above, or would like to discuss the topic in depth, please feel free to comment below. We ask that you keep your comments on topic so that this post stays educational and everyone can benefit from them. Any spam or unrelated comments will be deleted.
For more Tips and Notes click HERE.
Selected comments on original post
Very common in France is Les Halles (the market place), where the ‘s’ in ‘Les’ is silent, not elided.
CommeuneTexane [contributor]
Yes, you are right.
Other common aspirated h, (h aspiré) words include : le hibou, le hockey, and les haricots.
Here is a good list of words that are aspirated to use as a reference, but it is not necessary to memorize the entire list. Many aspirated h words are not that common. When you encounter a new word beginning in h, if it is aspirated, it will have an asterisk right before the word in a French dictionary.
Like this:
Duolinguists 