Première Leçon
from Omnigot...
-French is a Romance language spoken by about 112 million people in France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Canada, Switzerland, Italy, the USA, in many countries in Africa and the Caribbean, and on some Pacific islands.
-Like other Romance languages, French has two set of genders, masculine and feminine. There is no "real" way to tell the gender, but in many cases, you can tell by just looking at the ending of the word, which I will tell you later on.
-The word for "the" in French is le/la/l'/les
Le is for masculine singular
La is for feminine singular
L' is for words beginning with a vowel and sometimes a "h"
Les is for plural for all genders.
Example...
le livre - the book
la fleur - the flower
l'enfant - the child
l'hôtel - the hotel
les livres - the books
les fleurs - the flowers
les enfants - the children
les hôtels - the hotels
Sometimes the le and les merge with two certain prepositions, à (to, in, at) and de (of, from).
à + le = au
à + les = aux
de + le = du
de + les = des
-"A/an" is un/une/des
Un is for masculine nouns
Une is for feminine nouns
Des is for indefinite plurals, which is often omitted in English. Feminine nouns starting with a vowel and h is still "une".
Example...
un livre - a book
une fleur - a flower
une amie - a "female" friend
un enfant - a child
un hôtel - a hotel
des enfants - (some) children (as in..."il ont des enfants" --- they have (some) children)