81 5.11: Structure – Expressions de quantité
In this section, you will learn about expressions of quantity
Listen to the audio clips that follow on this page to hear the French pronunciation of vocabulary and examples presented.
On étudie !
Les expressions de quantité
When it does matter how much or how little there is of something, we can use adverbs of quantity (les adverbes de quantité) followed by de. We have already seen the question form of this with combien de (how much, how many). Here are some common examples:
| Français | Anglais | Français | Anglais |
|---|---|---|---|
| un peu de | a little (of) | beaucoup de | a lot (of), many |
| assez de | enough (of) | trop de | too much, too many |
| bien de | quite a few | pas mal de | quite a few |
| une quantité de | a good amount of | un tas de | a bunch of |
You can even sometimes exaggerate, for example with un peu:
Un peu (= a little)
Un petit peu (= a little bit, a tiny bit)
Un tout petit peu (= a tiny little bit, a smidgeon, the slightest bit)
The following adverbs of quantity allow you to speak about nouns as countable units:
| Français | Anglais | Français | Anglais |
|---|---|---|---|
| une tasse de | a cup of | un verre de | a glass of |
| une boîte de | a box of | un kilo de | a kilogram of |
| une feuille de | a sheet of | un morceau de | a piece of |
| une tranche de | a slice of | une bouteille de | a bottle of |
| un paquet de | a pack of | une part de | a part of |
There many more ways to do this depending on the object. For example, une bouteille de (a bottle of), un carton de (a carton of), un gramme de (a gram of), un litre de (a liter of), un sac de (a sack of), and so on.
When you are negating any partitives, indefinite articles or adverbs of quantity, you always just use de. Let’s use the example of avoir again:
J’ai des questions. Il a du pain.
J’ai beaucoup de questions. Il a beaucoup de pain.
Je n’ai pas de questions. Il n’a pas de pain.
On approfondit !
Use the following resources to type accents and/or search for words:
- Accents: ç, à, é, è, â, ê, î, ô, û, ù, ë, ï, ü
- Dictionnaire français-anglais
