Artikli in French: how to figure it out?

In the eyes of Russian people, France looks like something elegant and intelligent. The rich culture of this country attracts tourists from all over the world, the architectural heritage strikes the mind of sophisticated connoisseurs, and the traditions are prompted to a quiet rest and leisurely dreams. To visit France is the number one goal for all romantics of the world. But before you do it, you should get acquainted with the local language: the French do not like to speak English and are extremely reluctant to listen to it.

French language is the language of elite society

The nineteenth century entered Russian history as French: in those days the noble society could not imagine communicating in another language. Until now, it is considered a sign of luxury and wealth, and those who are perfectly fluent in it - people of considerable intelligence. However, to learn the language of capricious France is not so simple: in addition to a lot of times and irregular verbs, there is complexity less scale, but no less significant - articles in French.

What are the articles for?

It's hard for Russians to understand what function the article performs in French speech, since they do not have analogs in their native language. However, the availability of articles to the French is extremely important: with their help they convey information about whether the subject of the conversation was mentioned earlier, whether it occurs in the speech for the first time or is spoken about some part of it. Artikli in French play one of the main roles, so to miss this topic, considering that it is useless to know it.

Types of French articles

Unlike the common English language, which contains only two articles, the French can boast the presence of three kinds of particles: definite, indefinite and partial. Separately, you will have to learn the merged articles, but this task is the last in the list of those that should be performed to fully understand the French grammar.

Definite article

The definite article in French is one of the most common particles. Each text will necessarily contain not one dozen certain nouns. Such particles are used with those words that were encountered earlier, or with those that are a priori unique.

For example: Le Soleil éclaire la Terre - The sun illuminates the Earth. In this case, both the Sun and the Earth mean unique concepts - they are alone in the world, and there can be no question of anything else.

Une femme traverse la rue. La femme est jeune et belle. - A woman crosses the street. A young and beautiful woman. In this case we are talking about a woman already familiar from the previous remark, so a definite article is used. For the convenience of understanding, you can mentally replace it with the words "this," "this," "this."

Indefinite article

On an unfamiliar subject, on the contrary, indicates an indefinite article. In French, it can be used before nouns that refer only to a certain class.

For example: C'est une belle bague - This is a beautiful ring. In this case, the word "ring" is not only used for the first time, but also denotes class - beautiful rings do not exist for everyone.

Une femme lui a téléfoné. "The woman called him." The word "woman" has not been met before, and besides, who exactly called, is not specified, therefore before the word there is an indefinite article une.

This kind of article can be mentally defined by the words "some", "some", "some". For the correct use of this grammatical unit, one only needs to understand the meaning of its application: an indefinite article indicates something that is not known and is not specific.

Partial article

A partial article in French is used to denote uncountable objects and abstract concepts. Uncountable subjects include food, substance (air, water), material, generalizing words (noise, for example).

Particular attention deserves the shape of this particle. They are formed by adding the preposition de to a certain actor. For greater clarity, it is better to read the table.

Examples of use: Je mange du viande - I eat meat. In this case, the partial article indicates that the action occurs with a separate unit of the product. "A person can not eat all the provisions," the French think, "we should note this."

Vous avez du courage. "You are brave." Bravery is an abstract concept that can not be measured.

French articles: ways of memorizing

For a better understanding it is worthwhile to work out the theme, from which the French language mainly consists, Artikli. Exercises will put everything in its place, and the topic is easily remembered. A good example of exercises are tasks in which one of the kinds of articles is to be inserted at the place of the badge.

Exercise 1

Use the article that matches the meaning.
1) Marie adore __ roses (answer: les).
2) Robert écrit __ texte, c'est __ texte sur __ cinéma (answer: un, un, le).
3) C'est __ nappe. C'est __ nappe de Julie. __ nappe est sur __ bureau (answer: une, la, la, le).

There are several ways that help not to get confused in the use of articles. Basically they consist in the structuring of grammatical rules. Thus, one must remember that indefinite articles in French are used with nouns that are first encountered, as well as with unknown concepts. Partial article - with something abstract and uncountable. With the words "water" and the names of food products, the partial article can be mentally replaced with the word "part". There remains only the definite article, which is used in all other cases.

Correctly understand the speech of the interlocutor, translate any text, without difficulty to make a proposal help articles. In French, they are very important, because the correct structure of the supply is provided by these particles. Scraping rules is not necessary: understanding is what is really important. And it will come, you just need to try a little.