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Accord
Grammatical agreement is a vast topic – and one of the banes of French students. While in English we have a few nouns, pronouns, and adjectives that indicate gender and number (e.g., waiter/he/him/his and waitress/she/her/hers), in French, agreement is found in 5 of the 8 parts of speech. Here are the various types of French agreement with examples and links to in-depth lessons.
Adjectives
All the different kinds of French adjectives (demonstrative, possessive, negative, etc) have to agree with the nouns that they modify.
Cette femme est belle. | That woman is beautiful. | |
Nos enfants sont très inventifs. | Our kids are very creative. |
Articles
Each of the three types of French articles (definite, indefinite, partitive) have a masculine singular form, a feminine singular form, and a plural form.
le garçon, la fille, les enfants | the boy, the girl, the kids | |
un pull, une jupe, des vêtements | a sweater, a skirt, some clothes | |
du pain, de la tisane, des épinards | some bread, some tea, some spinach |
Nouns
Most French nouns have a singular form and a plural form. Nouns that refer to people or animals also have a masculine form and a feminine form.
un ami, une amie, des amis, des amies | friend(s) | |
le caissier, la caissière, les caissiers, les caissières | cashier(s) |
Compound Nouns
Making compound nouns plural is somewhat more complicated.
une pause-café, des pauses-café | coffee break(s) | |
le haut-parleur, les haut-parleurs | loudspeaker(s) |
Personal pronouns
Subject pronouns, object pronouns, and all the rest have different forms for each grammatical person.
Elle te voit. | She sees you. | |
Je peux vous les envoyer. | I can send them to you. | |
Montre-le-leur. | Show it to them. |
Impersonal pronouns
Five types of impersonal pronouns (demonstrative, indefinite, interrogative, negative, and possessive) must agree with the nouns they replace in gender and number.
Où sont tes gants ? Ceux-ci sont à moi. | Where are your gloves? These are mine. | |
Les miens sont dans la voiture. | Mine are in the car. | |
Chacune d’entre vous doit les porter. | Each of you has to wear them. |
Verbs
Verb agreement in the compound tenses and moods is probably the most difficult – take a look at verb agreement for details.
PwLF super list of agreement lessons
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