French grammar · A1 · Lesson 2
Adjective agreement, les and des
French adjectives agree with their noun: they add -e for a feminine noun and -s for a plural one (un passager élégant, une dame élégante, des dames élégantes). In the plural, le, la and l’ all become les (“the”), and un, une become des (“some”, often left untranslated).
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How does it work?
A French adjective is a copycat. It looks at its noun and copies two things: the gender (masculine or feminine) and the number (one or more). That is called agreement, and it gives most adjectives four written forms.
| one | more than one | |
|---|---|---|
| masculine | un passager élégant | des passagers élégants |
| feminine | une dame élégante | des dames élégantes |
Feminine: add -e. And listen: the -e itself is silent, but it wakes up the consonant before it. Élégant ends on a nasal “ahn”; élégante ends on a clear t. Same with grand / grande, anglais / anglaise (the s becomes a z sound). Often that consonant is the only way your ear can tell a man from a woman.
If the adjective already ends in -e, it has nothing to add: un homme riche, une dame riche. A few families change more: italien → italienne, sérieux → sérieuse, silencieux → silencieuse, long → longue.
Plural: add -s. This one is completely silent: élégant and élégants sound identical. Words already ending in -s or -x do not change: anglais, sérieux. And when men and women are mixed, the masculine wins, even if there is one gentleman among twenty ladies: les passagers sont élégants.
Les and des. Since the plural -s is silent, the article does the talking. Le, la and l’ all become les; un and une both become des, which means “some”, or very often nothing at all in English.
| one | more than one | |
|---|---|---|
| the | le passager, la dame, l’île | les passagers, les dames, les îles |
| a / some | un monsieur, une dame | des messieurs, des dames |
Before a vowel, les and des link up with a z sound: les‿îles (“lay-zeel”), des‿amis. And yes, monsieur has a strange plural, messieurs: it is really mon + sieur, so both halves go plural.
What does it look like in the story?
These sentences come from lesson 2, “The passengers”, where the narrator is crossing the Atlantic on the liner Provence with Arsène Lupin hidden among the passengers.
| French | English |
|---|---|
| Nelly est américaine. Lady Jerland est anglaise. | Nelly is American. Lady Jerland is English. |
| Les passagers sont riches et élégants. | The passengers are rich and elegant. |
| Des dames élégantes et des messieurs aimables parlent ensemble. | Elegant ladies and friendly gentlemen talk together. |
Try it: In lesson 1 the gentleman was italien and the passengers élégants. Here you read américaine, élégants and élégantes. What changes at the end of the word, and what is the adjective copying?
« Nous avions cette impression exquise d'être séparés du monde, réduits à nous-mêmes comme sur une île inconnue, obligés, par conséquent, de nous rapprocher les uns des autres. »
We had that exquisite feeling of being cut off from the world, left to ourselves as if on an unknown island, and therefore obliged to draw closer to one another. Maurice Leblanc, L’Arrestation d’Arsène Lupin (1905).
How is it different from English?
English adjectives never change: a tall man, a tall woman, tall people. French adjectives have up to four forms: grand, grande, grands, grandes. And where English happily says “ladies are talking” with no article, French needs one: des dames parlent.
What mistake do English speakers make?
Two classics. First, leaving out the article: ✗ Dames élégantes parlent copies “Elegant ladies talk”, but a French noun almost never goes out without its article: ✓ Des dames élégantes parlent. Second, forgetting to agree: ✗ Nelly est américain. Nelly is a woman, so ✓ Nelly est américaine, and you pronounce that final n.
Where can I practise it?
- Lesson 2: The passengers: the story, the rule and interactive exercises, free.
- Review 1: lessons 1 to 5: this point again, in a summary table with the other lessons of the block.
- The A1 glossary: every word of the course, French to English.
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