Articles, noun gender, and simple agreement

Learn the article with the noun

French nouns have grammatical gender. Un livre is masculine and une table is feminine. Learn a noun with un or une instead of guessing gender from what the object looks like.

Le and la mean the with singular nouns. Both become l’ before a vowel sound or silent h: l’école, l’hôtel. The elided article hides the gender, so also learn une école and un hôtel.

Build plural noun phrases

Les is the definite plural article for both genders. Des introduces unspecified plural countable things: des livres. Many nouns add written -s in the plural, though the final s is usually silent.

Article sounds often tell you whether a noun is singular or plural. Listen to le livre and les livres. Some plurals are irregular, so treat adding -s as a common pattern rather than a universal rule.

Match a describing word

Many adjectives add -e for feminine and -s for plural: petit, petite, petits, petites. Some already end in -e, such as calme, and keep that form in masculine and feminine singular.

Many adjectives follow the noun: un livre français. Common short adjectives such as petit often precede it: une petite table. Learn the full phrase so both placement and agreement become familiar.

Lesson vocabulary

Read each word aloud, then test your recall of its meaning.

Practice questions

Answer the questions and read the explanations. You can repeat the exercises.

I can learn a noun with its gender. I can make familiar noun phrases plural. I can match a simple adjective.