French · Chapter 1 · Lesson 7 · Grammar primer
French articles: when to use which
Definite vs indefinite vs partitive - including du / de la / des, the article English speakers consistently drop and shouldn't. Plus the elision rules (l'eau, d'un) that make the difference between French that sounds native and French that sounds wrong.
The short version
The article English drops but French demands
French has a third article system English lacks: the partitive du, de la, de l', des, marking an unspecified amount. Je mange du pain is I eat bread. Je mange pain is not a sentence. When in doubt, put the article in; French over-articulates by English standards.
Je mange du pain.
Talking about dogs in general takes les
General statements about a whole class keep the definite article in French, even though English strips it out. J'aime les chiens is I like dogs, not some particular dogs. The same goes for abstract nouns, languages and countries: la patience est une vertu, j'aime le français, je visite la France.
J'aime les chiens.
That's the gist. The full article goes deeper - more examples, the edge cases, the why - and the practice below scores like a vocabulary session and earns the same XP.
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