French Grammar and Numbers

Study Notes

French Grammar

French, unlike English, is a Romance language and belongs to the Indo-European family of languages. It has several core principles that govern its structure and usage. Some of these principles include:

Singular and Plural Nouns

In French, singular nouns end with -e when they are feminine, except for certain irregular cases like personne and oiseau. In the plural form, most masculine nouns have the suffix -s, while most feminine ones retain their last letter.

Articles

Unlike English, French uses definite and indefinite articles before singular and plural nouns. Definite articles are always used unless it's a contractions between ce and est, a, à, de, or en, etc. The indefinite articles vary depending on whether the word begins with a silent 'h', vowel, consonant or is an irregular case.

Verbs

Verbs in French generally follow subject+verb+object order. They also change based on tense: the past, present, future, imperfective, conditional, passive, infinitive, gerund, participle, and subjunctive. Unlike many other languages, French does not indicate person with verbs. The verb always changes according to the tense and mood.

Adjectives

Adjectives usually come after the noun they modify. If two adjectives modify the same noun, the first adjective comes before and the second one after the noun.

Numbers in French

Numbers in French follow specific rules to express quantities and counts. Here's a basic overview:

Ordinal numbers

These give position or rank in a sequence. For example, premier, second are ordinals from 1st to 10th. From 11th to 20th, we add '-ième' to the cardinal number without changing the ending, such as onzieme from eleventh.

Cardinal numbers

Cardinal numbers represent quantity. In French, there's a distinction between collective and distributive plurals. Collective refers to items together, and distributive refers to each item separately. For instance, les cinq enfants means five children together, whereas cinq enfants would mean five individual children.

Description

Explore the core principles of French grammar including singular and plural nouns, articles, verbs, and adjectives. Learn about the rules and distinctions of ordinal and cardinal numbers in French for expressing rankings and quantities.