🏡 French: My Home and Rooms

This is my home! In French, a house is la maison. Let’s go inside: Voici ma maison, which means “here is my house”. Today we will say the rooms, the furniture and where the cat is, in French.

Look at the plan of the house: la chambre (bedroom), la salle de bains (bathroom), le salon (living room), la cuisine (kitchen). Every word has a small word in front: le or la. English has just one, “the”. French has two.

In French, every noun is masculine or feminine. English does not do this! Words ending in -e are mostly feminine: la. Words ending in another letter are mostly masculine: le. Always learn the word together with its article. Blue is masculine, pink is feminine.

If a word starts with a vowel (or a silent h), le and la shrink to l’: l’armoire, l’horloge. Then the gender is hidden. When we say une armoire, we can see it is feminine. So learn un / une (a) as well.

For the plural we usually add -s, just like in English. The article changes too: la chaise → les chaises, le lit → les lits. In the plural, le and la are the same: les. One exception: words ending in -eau take -x: le tableau → les tableaux. The final s or x is silent when we speak.

We say what is in a room with il y a: Il y a un lit. (There is a bed.) For more than one, a number and a plural noun: Il y a deux chaises. (There are two chairs.) For no, we say il n’y a pas de: Il n’y a pas de lampe. (There is no lamp.) After the negative, un / une disappears and de comes.

To say where something is, we use small place words. Where is the cat? Où est le chat ? It is on the table: Le chat est sur la table. “On” is sur.

The cat jumped down and now it is under the table: Le chat est sous la table. “Under” is sous. On is sur, under is sous.

Summary: le, la, l’ are singular, les is plural. We say il y a for “there is” and il n’y a pas de for “there is no”. Sur is on, sous is under. Now try it in Ma Maison!