French Grammar - Articles and Determiners

Articles and Determiners

Articles and determiners agree in gender and number with the noun they determine; and, unlike with nouns, this inflection is made in speech as well as in writing. Perhaps for this reason, they are required in French much more often than in English: this enables nouns' genders and numbers to be reflected in speech.

French has three articles: definite, indefinite, and partitive. The difference between the definite and indefinite articles is similar to that in English (definite: the; indefinite: a, an), except that the indefinite article has a plural form (~some). The partitive article is similar to the indefinite article, but is used for uncountable nouns.