{"id":26713,"date":"2017-05-08T19:54:53","date_gmt":"2017-05-08T17:54:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/?p=26713"},"modified":"2017-10-27T13:15:23","modified_gmt":"2017-10-27T11:15:23","slug":"problematic-prepositions-de-part-trois","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/problematic-prepositions-de-part-trois\/","title":{"rendered":"Problematic Prepositions: De (Part Trois)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week<\/a> on the blog, we went over the rules regarding\u00a0de\u00a0<\/em>when used as an expression of quantity. This is typically very confusing for French learners, as it can be difficult to pick out what exactly an expression of quantity is. We’ll delve a bit more into the grammatical nitty-gritty of what constitutes an expression of quantity and what does not in this post.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Why is it important to determine if\u00a0de\u00a0<\/em>should be used as part of an expression of quantity? Because this will determine whether or not\u00a0de\u00a0<\/em>changes based on the gender of the noun that follows it (du, de la, de l’a<\/em>) or not (the one exception to this case is if\u00a0de\u00a0<\/em>comes before a noun that begins with a vowel, then it becomes\u00a0d’<\/em>). Instead of memorizing a list of expressions of quantity (although it is good to know what the common expressions are!), you can think of it instead in terms of specified<\/strong> and unspecified nouns<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

To clarify: If a noun is\u00a0specified\u00a0<\/strong>it will include further details, perhaps using adjectives or prepositional phrases that specify or qualify the noun. If a noun is\u00a0unspecified<\/strong>, however, there will be no further information about that noun. If the noun that comes after\u00a0de\u00a0<\/em>is specified, that means that\u00a0de\u00a0<\/em>is NOT part of an expression of quantity and that the\u00a0de\u00a0<\/em>can change based on the gender of the noun. If, however, the noun that comes after\u00a0de\u00a0<\/em>is unspecified, it is typically part of an expression of quantity and thus will not change based on the gender of the noun.<\/p>\n

Let’s look at a couple of examples.<\/p>\n

Je veux une tasse de th\u00e9.\u00a0<\/em>(I want a cup of tea.)<\/p>\n

Here,\u00a0th\u00e9\u00a0<\/em>(tea) is the noun that follows\u00a0de.\u00a0<\/em>Is it specified or unspecified? Ask yourself: Do you know anything further about the tea? If not, then it is an\u00a0unspecified noun.\u00a0<\/strong>This means that the\u00a0de,\u00a0<\/em>as you see, does not change to reflect the gender of the noun (th\u00e9<\/em>).<\/p>\n

J’ai bu moins de th\u00e9 que toi!\u00a0<\/em>(I drank less tea than you!)<\/p>\n

If you didn’t recognize this as part of an expression of quantity (moins de<\/em>), you would ask yourself again: Is the noun (th\u00e9<\/em>) a specified or unspecified noun? Although there is more information than in the previous example (a comparison), it does not further describe the tea itself. Thus, the noun remains unspecified. Once again, you’ll notice that\u00a0de\u00a0<\/em>does not change based on the gender of the noun.<\/p>\n

Je veux une tasse du th\u00e9 que tu as achet\u00e9 chez La Th\u00e9i\u00e8re.\u00a0<\/em>(I want a cup of the tea that you bought at\u00a0La Th\u00e9i\u00e8re.)<\/em><\/p>\n

Once again the noun we are examining is tea (th\u00e9<\/em>). But, here, we find out more about the tea. It’s not just any tea, but tea that was bought at a\u00a0salon de th\u00e9\u00a0<\/em>called\u00a0La Th\u00e9i\u00e8re<\/em>). This additional information means that the noun becomes\u00a0specified.<\/strong>\u00a0Because de\u00a0<\/em>is used before a\u00a0specified noun, <\/strong>it changes based on the gender of the noun. Because the French word for tea is masculine,\u00a0de\u00a0<\/em>becomes\u00a0du.\u00a0<\/em>Et voil\u00e0!<\/em><\/p>\n

Was this a more helpful way of determining whether or not\u00a0de\u00a0<\/em>should change based on the gender of the noun it precedes? If you still find yourself confused about this tricky preposition, leave a comment below.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"\"

Last week on the blog, we went over the rules regarding\u00a0de\u00a0when used as an expression of quantity. This is typically very confusing for French learners, as it can be difficult to pick out what exactly an expression of quantity is. We’ll delve a bit more into the grammatical nitty-gritty of what constitutes an expression of…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":123,"featured_media":26892,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[13469,284,346,385,125],"class_list":["post-26713","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-grammar","tag-de","tag-free-french-lessons","tag-french-grammar","tag-french-prepositions","tag-prepositions"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26713","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=26713"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26713\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29185,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26713\/revisions\/29185"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}