L'article défini 1 / The definite article 1
The article
défini has four different forms:
|
|
masculin |
féminin |
|
singulier |
le
- l’ |
la
- l’ |
|
pluriel
|
les |
|
As we saw in the previous "fiche" (l'article), French nouns are always either male or female, or rather, as we say in French, either masculin or féminin. The form, the sound, the spelling of the noun itself will not usually help you to remember whether a noun is masculin or féminin, and except for nouns designing people or animals, the meaning of the noun does not help either.
The article however will let you know, because the form of the article changes with the gender of the noun. We use le with masculin nouns and la with féminin nouns. The plural form is les for both masculin and féminin. Please note that when the noun begins with a vowel sound (like étudiante, animal, éléphant, hôtel, etc.), we use a shorter form, l’ for both masculin or féminin.
examples:
Now look at these sentences:
J’aime le café. (I like coffee)Le chien est un animal domestique. (The dog is a domesticated animal)Elle déteste les aéroports. (She hates airports)
What I mean here is that I like any kind of coffee, that any member of the dog family is domesticated, that she hates all kind of airports. Le café, le chien, les aéroports, do not refer to a particular coffee, dog or airport, but to coffee, dogs or airports in general.
This use of the article défini is particularly common with verbs like aimer, préférer, adorer, détester, etc.
Now try to do the exercises about the article défini 1 (printable - online: ex. 1, ex. 2). The exercises themselves are easy (all you have to do is choose between le, la, l' and les), but do them slowly and carefully, and even more importantly, try to understand the meaning of the article ("in general") in each of these sentences.