When to use 'le', 'la' or 'un', 'une'

[Guy]

Hi, just to find out more when is it appropriate to use 'le', 'la' (les when plural) or 'un', 'une' (des for plural)?

for example my book show un cours d'anglais, but can it be un cours l'anglais?

[Neil Coffey]

Basically, "le"/"la"/"les" usually mean 'the', and "un"/"une" mean 'a' (and as you say, "des" is in effect the plural of "un"/"une", and usually translates to 'some' in English).

In un cours d'anglais, what you have is an example of the preposition de, shortened to d' before a vowel. Literally, it generally means "of". But it is also usually the preposition used to form compounds in French. A compound is where a word gets 'fixed inside' an expression so that it can't be "referred to" with a word like "it", "them".

For example, if you think about the sentence "English lessons help you learn English", you might expect to be able to say "*English lessons help you learn it", but a native English speaker will tell you that this sounds odd (if the intended meaning is "help you learn English": on the other hand, if the "it" refers to something else then it sounds OK).

The reason is that "English lessons" is a compound. Usually when you get an expression like this where two or more elements are 'fixed together' so that they can't be referred to individually, the French equivalent is to stick words together with "de". So in this case, in cours d'anglais, you can't generally substitute the "de" (here d' because of the vowel but it's equivalent) for anything else.

(The French word de also has other uses: here we're just discussing one of those uses.)

[George Hunt]

 

For example, if you think about the sentence "English lessons help you learn English", you might expect to be able to say "*English lessons help you learn it", but a native English speaker will tell you that this sounds odd.

 

 

 

Is it just  me or does your example not make logical sense?

In "English lessons help you learn it", What is the "it" trying to refer to ? Is it "English" ? It sounds  alright to me and I think your point is that it should sound wrong.

Have you got another example? (I do understand that "english lessons"  as a compound  is  different from "english lessons" where the 2 words are treated as a noun plus an adjective  meaning perhaps "lessons made  in England" so maybe   I have got the point.

ps I can't seem to get the html button to work very well as I was trying to add colour and it didn't work and seemed to change the html code I was adding.

[Neil Coffey]

George -- here are some other examples, see how they sound to you (where the pronoun and noun in italics are supposed to be co-referent):

"House buyers pay for them with a mortgage."

"The post office can send it in one day."

"The traffic officer only needs to control it at rush hours."

"Car drivers usually fill them up with unleaded nowadays."

[Meshaun de Silva]

Hello Neil, this is an interesting topic and discussion.

About your 2nd example :
Doesn't it mean a bit odd?

Like, the post office can send it in one day.

Send what? Where's the Mail word? then only you can use a word like It right?

[George Hunt]

I think it is the post  -.another way of saying the mail .

 

The post office can send the post in one day.

[Neil Coffey]

So yes, logically you would expect it to be possible to say this sentence with the meaning of:

"The post office can send post in one day."

But it turns out that the sentence isn't grammatical with that meaning. (Of course, you could say e.g. "Give me your parcel: the post office can send it in one day", and the meaning one have to be "...send your parcel", not "...send post".)

The point is that when a noun gets 'locked inside' a compound, it can't generally be referred to with a 'referring' word like "it", "them", "these" etc (the technical term for these 'referring' words is "anaphora" in case anyone's interested in reading more about the phenomenon).

[George Hunt]

Oh now I see the point you are making!

It does seem a little sloppy-I am sure I would  be guilty of that at times.

[Charles D]

"un cours d'anglais" = a course of English (implying the English language).  You really wouldn't say "un cours l'anglais" since it would translate as "a course the English", would you?

Without "le", "un cours Anglais"  simply means "an English course" the way the racing oval at Ascot is "an English course."

"L'Ascot est un cours (de chasse) Anglais."

At least this is how I see the structures.