French Level 1
    Unit 6: Leçon 1a
    Des Nourritures
    Salut! Je m'appelle Lucas Georges! (I'm sure you know who I am by now, but I wanted to impress you by telling you in French!)I am soooo excited because I get to teach you how to talk about some of the AWESOME foods that I LOVE to eat!

    The French have the BEST stuff to eat. Honest! Everything tastes better here than it does in the states. Don't ask me why? There are some GREAT places to eat too. They even have McDonald's here, only the French call it, "Chez (Shay) McDonalds". Chez is one of those words that means the same as "apostraphe s" does in English. I'll explain.

    If I was going over to Gille's house, I would say, in English, "I' m going to Gille's", but in French I would say, "Je vais chez Gille".

    Get ready now. This next part is gonna be tough (hey, I'm kidding, of course)! Take a look at the pictures below and say the words after me. We'll start with the easy stuff:

    Des Nourritures
    Track 50
    un sandwich un hamburger un hot dog

    WHEW! That was a rough one, wasn't it? It's almost exactly like English. There is one thing that's different and that's the use of the word, "un" before the nouns. "Un" in French means, "a" or "an" in English. It is also the masculine form of "a" and "an", so what we are actually saying is: a sandwich, a hamburger, a hot dog. These are all words that are masculine in French.

    Now suppose that we wanted to say something like, "the sandwich", in French, we would say, "Le sandwich" (I'm sure you remember that "le" is the French word for "the" that goes before masculine nouns).

    Now let's try some "feminine" foods:

    Track 51
    une soupe une pizza une tarte

    AWESOME! You're doing GREAT! Now I'm sure you noticed that we used the word "une" in the sentences before the foods above. If you guessed that it also means, "a" or "an" in English, you're RIGHT!. This is the feminine form of these words. If I wanted to say "the pizza" in French, instead of "a pizza" I would have to use the feminine form of "the" which is "la". So, how would I say "the pizza "en français?" Why, "La pizza", of course!.

    Ready to start again? GOOD! How about:

    Track 52
    des boissons des fruits des légumes


    I'm sure that you've already noticed in this last of set of words there's more than one of each of the above foods, and that we are using the word, "des" before the nouns. That's because the word "des" means "some". Now you might be wondering why we don't use the French word for "the" instead of "some". You may also be wondering what the plural word for "the" is. I'll answer both questions for you.

    The English word, "the" is "les" in French (pronounced the same way as "des" is in the phrases above only with an "l" instead of a "d" sound. The word, "les" isn't used very much with food because it represents the idea of having "all of that kind of food in the world". Here's an example:

    If I was eating a Gille's house (or "Chez Gille") and I wanted him to pass me the vegetables, I would ask him to pass me "des légumes" (some vegetables). I know that the sentence sounds weird translated into English, but in French it makes sense. Here's why. If I asked him to pass me, "les légumes" I would be asking him to pass me all of the vegetables in the entire world! Yeah, I know it's sounds strange, but, hey, that's how French people think!

    Let's move on to the next leçon of the Unité!



Introduction / Leçon 1a / Leçon 1b