{"id":26708,"date":"2017-05-01T12:00:13","date_gmt":"2017-05-01T10:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/?p=26708"},"modified":"2017-11-06T14:37:13","modified_gmt":"2017-11-06T13:37:13","slug":"problematic-prepositions-de-part-deux","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/problematic-prepositions-de-part-deux\/","title":{"rendered":"Problematic Prepositions: De (Part Deux)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week<\/a>\u00a0we explored some of the most common usages of the French preposition\u00a0de<\/em>. In addition to a preposition that can express possession, relation, and direction, or to link verbs,\u00a0de\u00a0<\/em>can be used to express quantity, either alone or as part of an expression of quantity. Once again,\u00a0the rules governing how\u00a0de\u00a0<\/em>changes depends on its usage\u2014and this can be quite tricky.<\/p>\n

De\u00a0<\/em>means something like “some” and is often used in French to express an indeterminate quantity of something. Unlike in English, if you are not giving a specific amount of something (two kilos of bananas, for example) you need to use this preposition. So, where in English, you would say “I ate bananas for breakfast today,” in French you would need to say something like “I ate some<\/em> bananas for breakfast today” (J’ai mang\u00e9 des bananes pour le petit d\u00e9jeuner aujourd’hui.<\/em>).<\/p>\n

Just as de\u00a0<\/em>can change when it acts as a directional, relational, or possessional preposition\u00a0depending on the noun that follows it, so can it change when expressing quantities. This means:<\/p>\n

When\u00a0de\u00a0<\/em>precedes a masculine noun, it becomes\u00a0du.<\/em><\/p>\n

When\u00a0de\u00a0<\/em>precedes a feminine noun, it becomes\u00a0de la.<\/em><\/p>\n

When\u00a0de\u00a0<\/em>precedes a noun that begins with a vowel, it becomes\u00a0de l’.<\/em><\/p>\n

Easy enough, right? Not so fast! This gets trickier when\u00a0de\u00a0<\/em>becomes part of an expression of quantity (or if\u00a0de\u00a0<\/em>refers to something “unspecific”\u2014more on this later).<\/p>\n

If\u00a0de\u00a0<\/em>is part of an expression of quantity, it actually acts as an adverb (or an adverbial expression). The reason why this is tricky is because these expressions can be difficult to recognize. Let’s take a look.<\/p>\n

Here is a list of common adverbial expressions with de<\/em>:<\/p>\n

assez de\u00a0<\/em>(enough of)<\/p>\n

beaucoup de\u00a0<\/em>(a lot of)<\/p>\n

un peu de\u00a0<\/em>(a little of)<\/p>\n

une douzaine de\u00a0<\/em>(a dozen of)<\/p>\n

un kilo de\u00a0<\/em>(a kilogram of)<\/p>\n

une bouteille de\u00a0<\/em>(a bottle of)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

With any of these adverbial expressions,\u00a0de<\/em> DOES NOT CHANGE based on the gender of the noun that follows. In fact,\u00a0de\u00a0<\/em>does not change at all\u2014except when it precedes a noun that starts with a vowel. Then, it becomes\u00a0d’.<\/em><\/p>\n

Let’s take a closer look.<\/p>\n

Je veux avoir une bouteille de rouge, s’il vous pla\u00eet.\u00a0<\/em>(I’d like to have a bottle of red, please.)<\/p>\n

Notice how\u00a0de\u00a0<\/em>stays the same here and does not change into\u00a0du.\u00a0<\/em>This is because it is part of an expression of quantity,\u00a0une bouteille de<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Check back next week for the final part of the series on tricky prepositions (and adverbial expressions!).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"\"

Last week\u00a0we explored some of the most common usages of the French preposition\u00a0de. In addition to a preposition that can express possession, relation, and direction, or to link verbs,\u00a0de\u00a0can be used to express quantity, either alone or as part of an expression of quantity. Once again,\u00a0the rules governing how\u00a0de\u00a0changes depends on its usage\u2014and this can…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":123,"featured_media":26832,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[13469,284,346,385],"class_list":["post-26708","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-grammar","tag-de","tag-free-french-lessons","tag-french-grammar","tag-french-prepositions"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/123"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26708"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26708\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29186,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26708\/revisions\/29186"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}