gottahavacuppamocha

When learning French, articles are the bane of my existence.

In English, we have the definite article the and indefinite articles a and an, and we often drop them. For example, in the preceding sentence, I could have written, “…the indefinite articles…”, but didn’t, and it isn’t a big deal. In French class, one of the first things we learned was “No naked nouns” – every noun must be preceded by something, usually an article, but numbers work too.

As an aside, it’s interesting how learning another language makes you realize everything you forgot about your own language, or maybe it’s just me. In English, nouns are usually preceded by something as well. We can use articles and say, “The cat is purring,” or “A cat is purring,” but we can also say, “His cat is purring,” and, “Three cats are purring.” To me, the latter two aren’t articles, but they seem to be used in that manner. We could also say, “Some cats are purring,” which is an indication of quantity, but not a definite amount. I suppose I could look it up in a dictionary (precriptivist vs. descriptivist arguments aside), but I’m a bit too lazy for that at the moment.

French has the definite articles le, la, l’, and les. Since nouns in French have gender, the articles used depend on the gender of the noun. Le is used for masculine words and la is used for feminine words. L’ is used for words that begin with vowels (for either gender, IIRC). It’s similar that we use an in English, except an is indefinite and l’ is a definite article. Les is used for plural nouns, regardless of gender.

French also has indefinite articles un (masculine), une (feminine), and des (plural). If I remember correctly (it’s very possible I may not), un is also used for feminine words that begin with vowels. To top things off, French also has partitive articles du (masculine), de la (feminine), de l’ (vowels), and des (plural).

In general, partitive articles indicate a portion or part of something. In French, we could say:

J’ai mangé une pizza. – I ate a pizza. (A whole pizza)
J’ai mangé la pizza. – I ate the pizza. (The whole thing)
J’ai mangé de la pizza. – I ate some pizza.

In writing that, it dawned on me that saying, “I ate the pizza” could also indicate “I ate what was left of the pizza”, at least in English. I don’t know if that would be the same concept in other languages.

As if that wasn’t difficult enough, articles can be modified by prepositions. À means to, at, or in in English, and it can modify les articles définis, but to me it seems like another set of articles. Au (masculine), à la (feminine), à l’ (vowels), and aux (plurals) are handy, but they mean another set of rules to remember.

I keep thinking that if I stick with French long enough, I will get some sort of epiphany regarding the rules. I learned some of this in Second Language Acquisition last year. I think the key is experimentation and feedback. In class, our vocabulary and knowledge of the rules is enough where we should be able to hold simple conversations or maybe read some children’s books. However, since we probably use English exclusively outside of class, it’s difficult to put our lessons to practical use. Maybe I should get a pen pal or something.

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