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Unlike in English, in French neither an indirect object nor a circumstantial can become the subject of the passive voice: He was given a book has no direct equivalent in French. The most common word order in French is subject-verb-object (SVO). J’adore le chocolat (I love chocolate).
A quantifier is a determiner that quantifies its noun, like English "some" and "many". In French, as in English, quantifiers constitute an open word class, unlike most other kinds of determiners. In French, most quantifiers are formed using a noun or adverb of quantity and the preposition de (d ' when before a vowel).
The English meaning of the word exists only when in the plural form: [faire] ses débuts [sur scène] (to make one's débuts on the stage). The English meaning and usage also extends to sports to denote a player who is making their first appearance for a team or at an event.
Adjectives may agree with the noun they modify; examples of plural forms are the French petits and petites (the masculine plural and feminine plural respectively of petit). The same applies to some determiners – examples are the French plural definite article les , and the English demonstratives these and those .
In the grammar of several languages, plural forms tend to be perceived as deferential and more polite than singular forms. [ citation needed ] In diplomatic letters, such as letters of credence , it is customary for monarchs to use the singular first-person ( I , me , my ) when writing to other monarchs, while the majestic plural is used in ...
French verbs have a large number of simple (one-word) forms. These are composed of two distinct parts: the stem (or root, or radix), which indicates which verb it is, and the ending (inflection), which indicates the verb's tense (imperfect, present, future etc.) and mood and its subject's person (I, you, he/she etc.) and number, though many endings can correspond to multiple tense-mood-subject ...
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One must be aware, firstly, that word-final -x is a medieval shorthand for -us (in Old French people wrote chevax for chevaus, later written chevaux when the idea behind this -x was forgotten) (except in words like voix and noix where 's' was changed to 'x' by restoration of Latin usage (vox and nux)).