[cours] [fiches de grammaire]

L’article indéfini / The indefinite article

The article indéfini has three different forms:

As we said before, French nouns are always either masculin or féminin. Only the article will help you to recognize the gender of the nouns. We use un with masculin nouns and une with féminin nouns. When the noun is in the plural form, we use des for both masculin or féminin.  

Read the following sentences:  

In these examples, there is no way I can identify the car, the flat or the sandwich. I do not have enough information for this. There are many different red cars, small flats or sandwiches. In a situation like this in which we cannot identify the object or person we are talking about, we use an article indéfini.

Here are some more examples:  

Now, you can try doing the exercises (printable version) (on-line version: ex. 1, ex. 2). Fill in the blanks with article indéfini (all you have to do if find out whether the noun is masculin or féminin, singulier or pluriel). After that, read the exercises again and try to check whether you can identify the object or person. You should find out that you cannot.