Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
French has a T-V distinction in the second person singular. That is, it uses two different sets of pronouns: tu and vous and their various forms. The usage of tu and vous depends on the kind of relationship (formal or informal) that exists between the speaker and the person with whom they are speaking and the age differences between these subjects. [1]
In spoken French, the plurality of most nouns is marked not on the form of the noun itself but by a preceding article or determiner (cf. la maison [la mɛzɔ̃] 'the house' > les maisons [le mɛzɔ̃] 'the houses'; mon frère [mɔ̃ fʁɛːʁ] 'my brother' > mes frères [me fʁɛːʁ] 'my brothers').
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.
The feminine is often marked with the suffix -a, while masculine is often marked with -o (e.g., cirujano 'male surgeon' and cirujana 'female surgeon'); however, there are many exceptions often caused by the etymology of the word (la mano 'the hand' is feminine and el día 'the day' is masculine). [25]
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 ».
The pronoun is a neologism dating back to at least the early 2010s, including alternative spellings such as "iell," "ielle," and "ille." [6] [7]In April 2018, a group of doctoral students lobbied for the standard usage of "iel" along with other gender neutral language at the Université du Québec à Montréal. [8]
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 were masculine) and ce becomes cet.
The process is the movement of final consonants across word boundaries to initial position in vowel-initial words so as to better conform to the French language's preference for open syllables (over 70%) [dubious – discuss], i.e., V, CV, or CCV, especially where two vowels might otherwise link together (vowel hiatus).