The articles le, la, l' and les

Probably the most important words in any language are nouns. These are words like table or song that describe things that we can see or feel about us.

As we have seen before, an important thing to know about nouns in French is that they are all either masculine or feminine . This idea is known as the gender of nouns. In French, even words like table or chair have gender.

You can recognize nouns in English because they often have the word a or the in front of them. These words are called articles. The word the is called the definite article because it refers to a definite thing, such as the book (which you are reading) not just any book.

In French the word for the in front of masculine nouns is le:

Où est le stylo

Where’s the pen?

Elle adore le chocolat

She loves chocolate

And the word for the in front of feminine nouns is la:

Ouvre la fenêtre, s’il te plaît

Open the window, please

Quelle est la date d'aujourd'hui?

What’s the date today?

If the noun begins with a vowel like a or e, then the word for the is l’:

Tu vois l’oiseau?

Can you see the bird?

And if the noun is in the plural (like ships or tables), then the word for the is les:

Elle aime les chats

She likes cats