To form Plurals in French

How to form plurals in French

Tips and notes

Most plural forms of nouns and adjectives can be formed by appending an -s to the singular, but remember that this -s is usually silent.

Le chat noir — The black cat ⇒ Les chats noirs — The black cats
Articles must agree with the nouns they modify, so plural nouns require either les or des. This is a great way to tell if a noun is plural. If you hear les or des (which sound similar to "lay" and "day"), then the noun is plural. If not, it's probably singular.

Remember that verbs change conjugation to agree with their subjects in both grammatical person and number.

Subject Être ("to be") Parler ("to speak")
je suis parle
tu es parles
il/elle/on est parle
nous sommes parlons
vous êtes parlez
ils/elles sont parlent
Punctuation

There are no quotation marks in French. Instead, the French use guillemets (« »). Exclamation marks (!), question marks (?), colons (:), semicolons (;) and guillemets need to have a space on either side.

Incorrect: "Ça va?"
Correct: « Ça va ? »
When writing numbers in French, commas are decimal points, while spaces mark thousands places.

Incorrect: 1,235.8
Correct: 1 235,8