Il y a beaucoup de règles de grammaire en français.
Il y a beaucoup d'utilisations de "de" aussi.
I haven't yet mastered the many rules for the usage of "de". I'd been actually forgetting to use it at all in some situations: during my weekly lesson last week, for example.
Before last week I'd have said or written "Il y a beaucoup règles" or "Il y a beaucoup utilisations" to indicate that there are many rules or many uses. That would be a literal and wrong translation since "beaucoup" is always accompanied by "de" when talking about many things or people.
There is an upside to this rule- it's not very complicated. There are only two forms:
beaucoup de
beaucoup d' (for words starting with vowels or vowel sounds like "h").
That's it.
A bit anti-climactic, huh? If you'd like to be more engaged with beaucoup you might want to check out the Forvo website with their many words! Their tagline reads "All the words in the world. Pronounced". This website lets you "add words, pronounce, listen & learn".
It's still the beta version and not all the words in the French world have been pronounced for our listening pleasure but you can already listen to over 1200 words. So go ahead, say it (actually record it, too) and let your French be heard: Beaucoup de mots!
Devoirs- If you'd like homework, ahem, I mean to know more about beaucoup de and other expressions of quantity and do a quick exercise check out this website: Tex's French Grammar.
La photo: Many bottles of organically produced wine from le vignoble des hautes collines de la côte d'azur (on the Chemin des Sausses) St. Jeannet, France. Juin, 2008. More Information on this website- - register so that you can get the free sample PDF of their Wine Travel Guide for the Inland Provence where more information on this winery is available: Wine Travel Guides
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4 comments:
Hi Petit Foufou
No contact address for you, so just wanted to give you 'Many!' thanks for the link to www.winetravelguides.com - we provide on-line travel guides to French wine regions ideal for independent travellers.
Is the photo really from Domaine des Hautes Collines de la Côte d’Azur? (C'est intéressant!).
Salut Wink,
First- what a great name. ;-)
(Oh, you must get that all the time.)
Yes, that IS a photo of the said vineyards (Domaine des Hautes...). Thanks for reminding me that I had forgotten to put the date in- fixed that now.
You provided a very nice description of the vineyard's process (kudo's to your writer).
Beacoup de succès to you and your team!
p_ff
heyyy
i'm learning french too!!
i love it
and btw, you also can say beaucoup des if the following noun is plural...
makes sense really
the sentance structures in french are similar to english
so for you to forget putting of after beaucoup is a really silly mistake XD
just think of the sentance in english
you wouldn't say there are alot houses
you use the word OF lol
just thought i'd point that out :)
au'revoir xo
Salut Yviee.xo
Thanks for your comments and sharing your enthusiasm for learning French!
Beacoup de is used to denote "a lot of"- even when the noun following is plural- except for when the noun is referring to something specific. Here's an example from french.about.com:
"J'ai acheté une chemise dont beaucoup des boutons s'étaient détachés = I bought a shirt that a lot of the buttons had come off of
I'm talking about the specific buttons on this particular shirt
Beaucoup des idées de Jean-Luc sont intéressantes
=A lot of Jean-Luc's ideas are interesting
I'm not referring to ideas in general, but rather the specific ideas that Jean-Luc has"
In the cases I'm using it- I'm referring to rules and uses in general so beacoup de in this case is correct.
The full explanation is here :-)
http://french.about.com/od/mistakes/a/beaucoupdes.htm
bon week-end,
p_ff
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