l'an
/ɑ̃/
Translation
year
Grammar
Examples
.
He is twenty years old and already speaks three languages.
' ' .
It has been two years since we last saw each other.
l'etranger.
She spent three years studying abroad.
douze collège .
My daughter is twelve and starts secondary school this term.
, paysage numérique .
In ten years, the digital landscape will have completely changed.
An is the bare unit-of-time noun for "year", masculine. Its plural ans is one of the highest-frequency noun forms in spoken French because of the two everyday constructions it carries: ages (avoir X ans, to be X years old) and durations (pendant X ans, for X years; dans X ans, in X years). The distinction with année is the one French learners always ask about: an is the neutral unit of time, année insists on the duration lived or qualified (une belle année, cette année-là).
Bon an, mal an (taking one year with another, on average) is older but still literary. Les ans in a poetic register stands for the passing of time. The familiar avoir X ans bien sonnés (to be a solid X years old) is slightly humorous and worth knowing.
Related words
Used in
Stories
- Un voyage difficile4 min read
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Grammar articles
- French Advanced Grammar (C1-C2): The Constructions That Sound Native
- French Articles: Definite, Indefinite, Partitive, and the Article English Speakers Drop
- French Grammar Cheatsheet: The Essentials, One Page
- Conjugating French -er Verbs in the Present Tense
- Conjugating French -ir Verbs in the Present Tense
- Conjugating French -re Verbs in the Present Tense
- French Verb Conjugation: The Complete Rules with Examples
- French Intermediate Grammar (B1-B2): The Things That Stop You at the Plateau
- French Word Order: SVO, the Object Pronoun Inversion, and Six Rules That Cover 90% of Sentences
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