What Is It?
Singular and Plural Definite Articles
In French, you will encounter "the" in four ways. Specifically, it is written or spoken as le, la, l', or les. In this interactivity, you will learn details about each of these forms of "the." Click the player to begin.
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As you can imagine, there are countless words in French that use le, la, l', and les. Familiarize yourself with the words below and practice your pronunciation by repeating each aloud after the speaker. Click each word to hear the pronunciation.
| French | English |
|---|---|
| l'ami | a male friend |
| l'amie | a female friend |
| l’école (f) | school |
| l'élève (m/f) | student |
| l'homme | man |
| la femme | woman |
| la fille | girl |
| la musique | music |
| la pizza | pizza |
| la télé | television |
| le cahier | notebook |
| le cinéma | the movies |
| le football | soccer |
| le garçon | boy |
| le livre | book |
| le professeur | teacher |
| le sandwich | sandwich |
| le shopping | shopping |
| le sport | sports |
| le vélo | bicycle |
| les devoirs (m) | homework |
| les escargots (m) | snails |
| les jeux vidéo (m) | video games |
| les vacances (f) | vacation |
Notice how several of the vocabulary words have (m), (f), or (m/f) written beside them. This indicates masculine, feminine, or masculine/feminine, respectively. As you will learn later in this course, adjectives agree in gender and number with nouns. It therefore may be possible to guess a new noun's gender by looking at the adjective that goes with it.
Personal Pronouns
You use personal pronouns to replace the subject in a sentence. In English, for example, rather than saying "Monique is happy," you could say, "She is happy." The personal pronoun she, replaces Monique. Familiarize yourself with the personal pronouns below and practice your pronunciation by repeating each aloud after the speaker. Click each word to hear the pronunciation.
| French | English |
|---|---|
| je (j') | I |
| tu | you (s. fam.) |
| il | he |
| elle | she |
| on | one, they, we |
| nous | we |
| vous | you (pl. formal) |
| ils | they (mixed group, group of two or more male people, or two or more masculine objects) |
| elles | they (all feminine) |
| qui | who |
This interactivity will reinforce the vocabulary associated with personal pronouns. In addition, you will discover important details regarding the use of je and on. Click the player to begin.
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What Is It? Review
Now that you have learned about singular and plural definite articles and personal pronouns, review your knowledge in this non-graded activity. Click the player to get started.