French Demonstrative Adjectives For Beginners

Demonstrative Adjectives are used to identify a specific noun or nouns.

They sound complicated, but they are a simple little part of grammar that can really help us expand how we talk about things.

Demonstrative Adjectives In English

A demonstrative adjectives allow us to indentify (or determine) a noun and also tell if it is near, or far away, both in physical space and time.

The demonstrative adjectives always come before a noun and they can be either singular or plural depending on what noun or nouns you are talking about.  

Singular – This, That

Plural – These, Those

The time and space thing sounds a little weird, but when you think about how you speak, it makes a lot of sense.

To show physical distance we would say: ‘this book’ which implies a book you have near to you or even in your hand, and ‘that book’ implies it’s further away from you and you would have to point to it. We can use this to tell if something is near to us or far away.

It also works for time: “this movie is great” implies you are about to watch it, or maybe in the middle of watching it. Whereas “That movie” implies it is in the past and that you have already watched it. So we can tell if something is near or far away in regards to time.

Try not to get confused with the ‘demonstrative pronoun’ which is very similar as it uses the same words. This would be when referring to a movie and saying “this was great” or “that was great”. It looks very similar, but in this instant, these words ’This and That’ replace the noun (movie). That is a different lesson for a different day.

Demonstrative Adjectives In French

In French it works exactly the same way. However, there are three little differences.

The first being that the word for ‘This’ and ‘That’ is actually the same word in French.

Which of course means the when you are talking about a plural, ‘These’ and ‘Those’ it is also one word for both in French.

This can seem confusing at first, but once you hear the context around the words, it should become more clear if someone means ‘this’ or ‘that’.     

The second difference is gender. There is a masculine and feminine word for the singular version (luckily the plural is the same for both genders). You need to match the gender of the demonstrative adjective with the noun it is referring to. Like all sentences in French, everything must agree and all be the same gender.

The third difference is that the singular masculine word will change slightly if the noun it is referring to starts with a vowel or an H.

This table should make it clear

	Masculine	Masculine before a vowel or H	Feminine
This/That (singular)	Ce	Cet	Cette
These/Those (plural)	Ces	Ces	Ces

So hopefully you have noticed that the plural word is all the same. So no matter what you are talking about, If it is plural, use ‘Ces’. The gender does not matter.

“These peas are green – ces pois sont verts” (peas is male word)

“These apples are green – ces pommes sont vertes” (apples is a female word)

You just need to learn the male and female words for the singular versions.

“This pea is green – ce pois est vert”

“This apple is green – cette pomme est verte”

Then if the word is masculine and starts with a vowel or an ‘H’ …just change ‘ce’ to ‘cet’

“This album – cet album”

Conculsion

This can be a lot to process at first. Just take your time and think it through.

Look at the noun it is referring to and decide if this is male or female and if it singular or plural.

Once you know that you can check the table to see what word to use. You will quickly start to get use to it and know exactly what word to you.

Also when you reading, this can another great clue to find the gender of a word that you are not sure about.

(Read the next lesson – French Reflective Verbs)