La maison

A French flat advertised as trois pièces has three rooms, not counting the kitchen and bathroom. It does not have three bedrooms. Read the listing as though it did and you will turn up to something half the size you expected.

The words for room

• Une pièce is any room in the counting sense.
• Une chambre is specifically where you sleep.
• Une salle mostly appears in compounds: salle de bains, salle à manger, salle de classe.
• Un salon is a living room, the room you receive people in.

Pièce is also a coin, and a play in the theatre. French is comfortable with a word doing three jobs when nothing is likely to confuse them.

Floors start from zero

Le rez-de-chaussée is the ground floor. Le premier étage is one flight up, which is the second floor to an American. This has consequences in lifts and delivery instructions, and it is a genuine source of missed appointments.

Un étage is a storey. Le sol is the floor you walk on. Two different meanings of the English word floor, and French keeps them apart.

Appartement and its neighbours

Un appartement is a flat. Un immeuble is the block it sits in. Une maison is a house. Un logement is accommodation in the abstract, the word used by administrators and landlords.

Un foyer is a home in the emotional sense, and also a hostel, and also a hearth. It is a lovely word and almost never the one you want for the place you actually live.

Doors and what they do

La porte is the door; la porte d'entrée is the front door. Fermer à clé is to lock, literally to close with a key, which is a good illustration of how French builds phrases where English has a single verb.

Getting the neighbours right

Un voisin is a neighbour. In an apartment building the relationship is more formal than the English word suggests: you say bonjour in the stairwell every time, and the failure to do so is noticed and resented for years.