🏷️ Definite and indefinite articles

📖 In short

In French, before every noun we put a little word called the “article”. It tells us whether the noun is masculine or feminine, singular or plural, and whether it's a particular thing or not.

🔎 The lesson

1 Definite articles: le, la, les

Like “the” in English: we use them when talking about a particular thing.

Masculine singular	Feminine singular	plural
le	la	les

le chatThe cat
la maisonHouse
les livresThe books

2 l' before a vowel

If the noun starts with a vowel or an h, we drop the e or a from the article and add an apostrophe: l'.

l'arbreTree
l'écoleSchool
l'hôpitalThe hospital

3 Indefinite articles: un, une, des

We use them for something not particular, like “a” or “some” in English.

Masculine singular	Feminine singular	plural
un	une	des

un chienA dog
une pommeAn apple
des fleursFlowers

📊 In a picture

The article changes: le for masculine, la for feminine, les for plural

💡 Watch out!

Learn every new noun with its article: don't learn table on its own, but la table.
des often has no English word to match (or just “some”), but you can't leave it out: J'ai des crayons.

🧩 Test yourself

1 Choose the article: ... maison

2 Choose the article: ... arbre

3 What is the plural of un chat?

→ The family in French ← Masculine and feminine