French Grammar Explained /
Quantity
I was with my host family in Canada last week and my host mother asked me to go grocery shopping one day.
Oh, did she gave you a shopping list in French then?
Yes she did! Look at it:
Liste des courses
2 avocats
1 kilo de tomates
500 grammes de poulet
1 pot de moutarde
2 morceaux d'Emmental
1 plaquette de beurre (f)
3 litres de lait
10 tranches de jambon
1 botte de radis (f)
1 tablette de chocolats (f)
1 paquet de biscuits
1 bouteille de vin rouge (f)
That's a very long list!
Oui ! There was a lot of unknown words to me... I had to look in a dictionary.
And did you manage to buy everything?
Bien sûr ! I also wanted some maple syrup and 3 pieces of cheese for myself but when I left home I had forgotten to look at how to say those...
Qu'est-ce que tu as fait alors ?
I looked at the list and noticed a regularity:
Un kilo de / d'
Un pot de / d'
3 morceaux de / d'
To give the measure of something, you always use de or d' independently of the noun's gender!
Piece of cake, right? :)