When learning French, there is this time where you’re faced with the dreaded ‘prepositions’ : au, à la, aux.
The teacher goes – put the right preposition before these words: cinéma, restaurant, piscine, toilettes.
You might well get a top grade for using the grammar strategies your teacher recommended (thinking about gender, then choosing the right preposition combined with the article, then make it smooth, etc.).
What you didn’t know is that… it simply is too much work!
Your brain even becomes paralyzed at the idea of having to put out a simple sentence.
Coming back to the basics
Before moving on to au/à la/aux stuff, they never tell you you went a bit too far ahead:
1. You were never quite sure what ‘à’ meant in the first place – so let alone when used in combination with le/la/les
2. You may have learned that cities have à just before them (à Paris), but could not seem to make sense of that ‘à’ in other sentences : ‘à 8 heures’, ‘à mardi!’
à + place
Some combos are very powerful for learning French.
I don’t always recommend combos – some aspects of French grammar do not suit that approach.
But most of the time, it works in a powerful way that increases your confidence almost instantly.
Knowing whether the ‘combo approach’ should be used or not takes a lot of skill and understanding of French grammar and advanced phonetics – something only your French teacher/tutor will be able to plan out for you.
A powerful combo is: preposition + place.
Cities are the best place to start as the sound is so simple: /a/.
Then you just name the place, bearing in mind that English pronunciation does not always work (PariS vs Pari-s, silent s).
à + Paris = /a/ + /pah.REE/ = /apaREE/
à + Tokyo = /a/ + /to.kyo/ = /atoKYO/
Your pronunciation will have to sound more French to be able to be understood by French speakers (except for Quebec mostly, where French speakers are very familiar with the way it’s pronounced in an American way).
à + New York = /a/ + /noo.YORK/
French doesn’t have the /ew/ part from /new/ – it therefore changes into a more ‘Frenchy’ way and the typical ‘French accent’ : /noo/, the same sound you find in ‘nous’.
Think about it this way:
We + York = Nous + York = Nous York 🙂
In + New + York = /a/ + /noo/ + /YORK/ (slight rise by the end) = à New York ! 🙂
au + place
Using the same trick helps your French improve dramatically, without having to use the complicated grammar that ‘should’ go with it.
Approach 1
- à means at
- à should be combined with an article le/la/les
- à becomes au/à la/aux
- in order to choose you need to know whether words are masculine singular/masculine plural/feminine singular/feminine plural
- Voilà!
Takes a lot of time and energy. It doesn’t help with retention of new words as you always feel compelled to go through this technique instead of just starting speaking with confidence – because that’s what the teacher said was going to help you.
It undermines your confidence because the process is just too long and takes a toll on your energy levels.
Approach 2
- Practice that sound : /a/
- Choose a city you like, you’d like to be able to talk about
- Look up the French way of pronouncing that city : New York is /noo.YORK/, Rome is /rum/ (very close to English ‘rhum’), Washington is /wah.shin.TON/ instead of English /WAshington/, etc.
- Combine the /a/ sound + the newly found ‘Frenchy’ pronunciation for cities
/anoo.YORK/
/aRUM/
/awah.shin.TON/
etc.
The slight rise is always on the last syllable – take English /new.YORK/ as an example, but not English /WAshington/, as it’s on the first.
As you realize, Approach 2 works better in many ways:
– it’s easier
– it’s quicker
– it does not seek to undermine your confidence, but to build confidence instead.
– it makes you more familiar with the ways French is pronounced in other situations (the slight rise by the end of any word or any group of words).
au + place, à la + place, aux + place
The great thing about ‘au’ and ‘aux’ is that the sound is the same: /o/ (see the English word ‘law‘).
au + cinéma
au + restaurant
aux + toilettes
Again, using Approach 2 will help:
/o/ + place,
whether the spelling goes ‘au’ or ‘aux’ should not matter to you as you’re trying to get speaking French as soon as possible.
à l’ + place
Again, as the teacher explains the ins and outs of French ‘apostrophe’, you are left confused with what you should be doing with that information.
The trick is – you never needed that information in the first place, as it doesn’t help you get speaking French.
Think about it terms of Approach 2 (meaning focused on sounds, instead of grammar theory):
à l’ = /al/.
Think about a pal called ‘Al’, for ‘Alistair’, for example.
/al/ + name of a place
There aren’t many of them that will follow this pattern.
Use these three:
What do you think those mean?
/al/ + /écol/
/al/ + /opital/
/al/ + /otel/
Right!
à l’ + école = at + school
à l’ + hôpital = at + (the) hospital
à l’ + hôtel + at + (the) hotel.
The h- is always silent in French.
For optimal pronunciation, I suggest you go with this:
/a/ + /léCOL/
/a/ + /lopiTAL/
/a/ + /loTEL/
– separating the /a/ from the rest, and using the French ‘slight rise’ at the end of a word, or any group of words.
Approach 2 simply works. A no brainer – no advanced French grammar theory needed.
Download this free ebook for the most common à + place combos in French!