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A few adjectives have a fifth form, viz. an additional masculine singular form for use in liaison before a noun beginning with a vowel or a "mute h", e.g. un beau jardin, un bel homme, une belle femme, de beaux enfants, de belles maisons (a beautiful garden, a handsome man, a beautiful woman, beautiful children, beautiful houses).
In this case both o and două are in their feminine forms. Neuter: un corp, două corpuri ('one body', 'two bodies'), un sertar, două sertare ('one drawer', 'two drawers'). In this case un is in its masculine form while două is in its feminine form. This is the only case in which the two numbers have different genders.
The prepositions à (' to, at ') and de (' of, from ') form contracted forms with the masculine and plural articles le and les: au, du, aux, and des, respectively.. Like the, the French definite article is used with a noun referring to a specific item when both the speaker and the audience know what the item is.
La is used, however, when el would imply a masculine noun: la ácrata (because el ácrata would be a male anarchist) la árabe (because el árabe would be a male Arab, or the Arabic language) Feminine el is never used, however, before feminine adjectives that begin with a stressed a: la alta montaña = "the high mountain" la ancha calle = "the ...
Nowadays, the form of lequel is typically replaced with qui when the antecedent is a person: « la femme de qui j'ai parlé ». Further, if the preposition is de , even if it is not the de of the possession, dont has started to be used (with both person and non-person antecedents): « la femme dont j'ai parlé ».
Activists against sexism in language are also concerned about words whose feminine form has a different (usually less prestigious) meaning: An ambiguous case is "secretary": a secretaria is an attendant for her boss or a typist, usually female, while a secretario is a high-rank position—as in secretario general del partido comunista, "secretary general of the communist party"—usually held ...
Indefinite article: un, une, des; Partitive article: du, de la, des; Possessives (for the first person singular): mon, ma, mes; Demonstratives: ce, cette, ces; Notice that some of the above also change (in the singular) if the following word begins with a vowel: le and la become l′, du and de la become de l′, ma becomes mon (as if the noun ...
This makes the adjectives sound like their feminine forms, so bon ami is pronounced the same as bonne amie. In some cases, this alternation is reflected in the orthography: un beau cygne but un bel oiseau (both masculine singular).