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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 French terminations -ois / -ais serve as both the singular and plural masculine; adding e (-oise / -aise) makes them singular feminine; es (-oises / -aises) makes them plural feminine. The Spanish and Portuguese termination -o usually denotes the masculine , and is normally changed to feminine by dropping the -o and adding -a .
French nouns whose spoken plural forms are distinguished from the singular include most of those ending in -al, whose plural form is -aux (cf. cheval [ʃəval] > chevaux [ʃəvo] 'horses'), as well as a few nouns ending in -ail that also follow this pattern (cf. travail [tʁavaj] > travaux [tʁavo] 'works').
Some countries have also undergone name changes for political or other reasons. Countries are listed alphabetically by their most common name in English. Each English name is followed by its most common equivalents in other languages, listed in English alphabetical order (ignoring accents) by name and by language.
The plural forms are usually "-os" and "-as" respectively. Adjectives ending -ish can be used as collective demonyms (e.g. the English, the Cornish ). So can those ending in -ch / -tch (e.g. the French , the Dutch ) provided they are pronounced with a 'ch' sound (e.g. the adjective Czech does not qualify).
The following chart lists countries and dependencies along with their capital cities, in English and non-English official language(s). In bold: internationally recognized sovereign states. The 193 member states of the United Nations (UN) Vatican City (administered by the Holy See, a UN observer state), which is generally recognized as a ...
French orthography encompasses the spelling and punctuation of the French language.It is based on a combination of phonemic and historical principles. The spelling of words is largely based on the pronunciation of Old French c. 1100 –1200 AD, and has stayed more or less the same since then, despite enormous changes to the pronunciation of the language in the intervening years.
It is estimated that 12% (4,200) of common French words found in a typical dictionary such as the Petit Larousse or Micro-Robert Plus (35,000 words) are of foreign origin (where Greek and Latin learned words are not seen as foreign). About 25% (1,054) of these foreign words come from English and are fairly recent borrowings.