Grammaire 2: Expressing relationships (‘de’ preposition)
cgloor
On étudie !
There are several ways to talk about ownership and possession in French. We have already seen in section 7 that we can do so with possessive adjectives (les adjectif possessifs).
(a) Another way to express possession or association is to use the preposition de :
le frère de Michel (the brother of Michel).
We use this structure less frequently in English so it may sound awkward or archaic to you (see examples below). In French, however, it is used all the time and sounds perfectly normal:
L’ami de John (the friend of John)
La maison de Janet (the house of Janet)
Le roi de la montagne (the king of the mountain)
In this context, de roughly translates to the English -‘s.
L’ami de John (John’s friend)
La maison de Janet (Janet’s house)
IMPORTANT:
When the preposition de is followed by the definite articles le and les (and a noun), they contract to du and des, respectively:
- de + le ➔ du
les livres du professeur [les livres
de leprofesseur](= The books of the professor = The professor’s books)
- de + les ➔ des
les livres des étudiants [les livres
de lesétudiants](= The books of the students = The students’ books.)
There is no contraction when de is followed by la or l’.
Les livres de l’ami de Frank
( = The books of the friend of Frank =Frank’s friend’s books)
Les livres de la bibliothèque
( = The books of the library = The library’s books)
Structure : Contractions with de + le/les (article défini)
| Singulier | Pluriel |
|---|---|
| de + le = du | de + les = des |
