Choose articles and notice elision

By UK GCSE French · independent study · myAudience

Original illustration generated with OpenAI imagegen for myAudience; fictional teaching scene. · Original generated artwork; no exam-board art or photograph reproduced.

Choose articles and notice elision

French nouns have grammatical gender. Learn a noun with an article rather than guessing from the object: un livre is a book; une table is a table. Gender belongs to the noun, not to whether an object looks masculine or feminine. Un and une introduce one unspecified item; le and la identify an item or category understood in context.

For more than one item, des can introduce some items and les identifies plural items. Most written noun plurals add s: un livre becomes des livres. The plural article does not distinguish masculine from feminine. Some nouns use other patterns, so this introductory rule must not be applied to every word.

Le and la become l’ before a vowel or silent h: l’amie and l’histoire. This elision does not remove the noun’s gender. Une amie is still feminine. Je also becomes j’ before a verb beginning with a vowel, as in j’aime. An apostrophe replaces the omitted vowel; it is not a space inside a word.

Use the reading-room scene to distinguish a category from a particular object. « Il y a un livre sur la table » introduces a book on the table. « Le livre est ouvert » then refers to that book. Vocabulary: ouvert means open; sur means on. The illustration is an invented practice context, not an official exam photograph.

Worked example: Introduce some books, without specifying a number, and then refer to them as known books.

Use des with the plural noun livres to introduce them.

Use les to refer back to the same books.

Answer: Des livres; les livres.

Check your understanding: Choose le, la or l’ for « ___ amie » and explain whether the noun becomes masculine.

Answer: L’amie; amie remains feminine.

Why: The vowel at the beginning triggers elision; une amie shows its feminine gender.