When do you need to use an article with a country, for example, La Corse or Corse.
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When do you need to use an article with a country, for example, La Corse or Corse.
The short answer is that you always use the definite article with countries, regions etc to simply say France, Corsica... = la France, la Corse...
Have a look at our related lesson:
Using le, la, l', les with continents, countries & regions names (definite articles)">Using le, la, l', les with continents, countries & regions names (definite articles)">Using le, la, l', les with continents, countries & regions names (definite articles)">Using le, la, l', les with continents, countries & regions names (definite articles)
Bonne journée !
Bonjour Randi, et merci beaucoup pour ces compliments !
The lesson in itself is quite straightforward, though I agree that the "endless" number of cases can make it overwhelming at times :)
Remember that 95% of regions, states and countries ending in -e are feminine (and that they represent the great majority of cases), and try to focus on memorising the exceptions (and I'd say, starting with the ones you'll encounter more often in your everyday life)
Hang on, and remember that French saying:
C'est en forgeant qu'on devient forgeron !
It's by forging that we become a blacksmith! => Practice makes perfect!
Bonne journée !
PS: Look out for our next Gap Fill exercise called "Un été international" ;)
Thanks for this summary, Ron. It’s helpful to me.
I can’t be critical of Aurélie’s lesson because, we’ll, I’m just adoring everything about Aurélie and this site. I’ve improved my French grammar so much since I signed on a month ago. So I’ll toil on, despite frustrations. That said, I’ve found this particular topic incredibly difficult to learn.
Aurélie, it might be helpful to add more mini-lessons here, breaking this topic into sub-topics. I might digest this more easily if I could ingest it in even smaller bites. For example, maybe you could offer a lesson titled “use ‘en’ with feminine regions/states/counties”, and a separate lesson for “dans le”.
Just a thought. Ultimately, I think I’ll take Ron’s suggestion and just try to commit corresponding geographic prepositions to memory. It won’t be easy. But I never thought I’d memorize all the verbs in Mr. and Mrs. Vandertramp, and I finally did.
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