Purpose

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to use common French prepositions correctly, including the mandatory contraction with certain articles.

Lesson Explanation

Prepositions show the relationship between a noun/pronoun and another word: à, de, dans, sur, sous, avec, sans, pour (to/at, of/from, in, on, under, with, without, for).

A genuinely important, mandatory rule: the prepositions à and de CONTRACT with the definite articles le and les — a system genuinely similar in spirit to the German preposition contractions and Italian “preposizioni articolate” covered in earlier-built Gabal courses, though smaller in scope:

à + le → au à + les → aux de + le → du de + les → des

These contractions are genuinely mandatory, not optional style — writing “à le cinéma” instead of au cinéma is a real grammatical error. Note that à/de + la and à/de + l’ do NOT contract: à la plage, de l’école (to the beach, from the school) stay as separate words.

Conjunctions connect words, phrases, or clauses. Common coordinating conjunctions: et, ou, mais, donc, car (and, or, but, so, because/for). Common subordinating conjunctions: parce que, quand, si, bien que, pendant que (because, when, if, although, while) — subordinating conjunctions introduce a dependent clause, a structure covered fully in Part 2, Lesson 3.

Practice Questions