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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.

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.

Every other French adjective sits where you'd expect, but tout jumps the queue: tous les jours, not 'les tous jours'. Get the four forms right too - tout, toute, tous, toutes - and this one adjective stops being the trap it usually is.

It nominalises the nationality adjective instead: français agrees with a person in il est français, but freeze it and the same word names the language, le français. The same trick gives you l'anglais, l'espagnol and l'allemand for free.

Before a vowel or a silent h, le and la lose their vowel: l'eau, l'homme, l'arbre. It is compulsory, so la eau is wrong every time. The catch is that l' hides the gender, so learn it with the word: l'eau is feminine, l'arbre masculine. Un and une never elide.