L'Accord des Déterminants: récapitulatif

French determiners exist in a tight grammatical agreement system: most of them must match the noun they introduce in gender and number, and the few that do not match are unusual enough to be worth memorising as exceptions. This page gives a complete inventory of the system — every category of determiner, what it agrees with, and what to do in the awkward cases where a noun phrase contains more than one noun. By the end you should be able to look at any determiner in any French sentence and say with confidence whether it is agreeing correctly.

What "agreement" means in French

Agreement (accord) means that a word's form is selected to match a feature of another word. For determiners, the agreement triggers are the gender (masculin/féminin) and number (singulier/pluriel) of the noun. The determiner sits in a fixed slot before the noun and adjusts its shape accordingly.

So the article the in English, which never changes, has up to four French equivalents — le, la, l', les — depending on the noun. The possessive my has six (mon, ma, mes, ...). The demonstrative this/that/these/those has three (ce, cette, ces) plus the special cet before vowels. Every category of determiner that you might expect to translate as a single English word turns out to have a small paradigm in French.

The fundamental rule is simple: agree in gender and number with the noun. The rest of this page catalogues each category and its specific quirks.

Articles: definite, indefinite, partitive

The three article systems are the cleanest examples of agreement. Each system has masculine, feminine, and plural forms.

Worked examples:

The plural forms les and des do not encode gender. Les chats and les chattes are both les; des amis and des amies are both des. Gender resurfaces on adjectives and other agreement targets, but the plural article is gender-neutral — a useful simplification.

Note that the partitive des and the indefinite plural des are formally identical and historically related, but they answer different questions: indefinite des counts items (des livres = some books, plural countable), partitive des divides a mass (des fruits in the sense of "some fruit" rather than "some specific number of fruits"). This homophony is rarely a problem in practice.

Possessive determiners

Possessive determiners agree with the possessed noun, not the possessor. This is famously confusing for English speakers, who use possessives that agree with the possessor (his book, her book, their book).

So son livre can mean "his book" or "her book" — the possessor's gender is invisible; only the book's gender matters. Examples:

Add the phonological override: before a vowel-initial feminine noun, ma, ta, sa become mon, ton, son: mon amie, ton école, son adresse. The noun is still feminine, but the surface form of the determiner is the masculine one. See mon-vs-ma-with-vowels for the dedicated treatment.

Demonstrative determiners

The demonstrative system has three core forms plus one variant before vowels.

For specific demonstrative reference (this vs that), French adds the suffixes -ci (here) and -là (there): ce livre-ci, ce livre-là. The determiner itself does not change form; only the suffix encodes proximity.

Quantifiers: a mixed bag

Quantifiers are the category where agreement gets irregular. Some agree fully, some are invariable, and some agree only in number (not gender).

Fully agreeing:

• tout / toute / tous / toutes — agrees in gender and number.
• certains / certaines — only in plural; agrees in gender.
• aucun / aucune — only in singular (with rare exceptions); agrees in gender.
• plusieurs — only plural; invariable in gender.
• quelques — plural only; invariable in gender.

Invariable quantifiers — these never change form:

• chaque — always singular, no gender, no plural form ever.
• plus de, moins de, beaucoup de, peu de, assez de, trop de, autant de — quantitative de phrases that take a bare noun.
• n'importe quel/quelle/quels/quelles — see below; the quel part still agrees.

The asymmetry is intentional: chaque refuses plural agreement because its meaning is intrinsically singular ("each one"), and plusieurs refuses singular agreement because its meaning is intrinsically plural ("several"). Both refuse gender marking because their semantics treat all referents alike regardless of gender.

Numerals: only un agrees

Cardinal numerals are mostly invariable. The only one that agrees is the lowest, un / une, which is identical to the indefinite article and tracks gender accordingly.

The numerals two through ninety-nine are gender-invariable: deux, trois, ..., quatre-vingt-dix-neuf. They also do not show number marking in writing (no -s) — they are inherently plural in meaning.

The numerals vingt (20) and cent (100), used as multipliers in compounds, are the famous orthographic exception: they take an -s in plural when they are the last element of the number, but lose the -s when followed by another numeral.

The 1990 spelling reform allows hyphenation throughout (quatre-vingt-cinq), but the vingt/cent agreement rule is unchanged. Mille is always invariable: deux mille, trois mille, never milles.

The "millions" and "billions" words million, milliard, millier are nouns rather than numerals, so they take regular plural agreement (deux millions de personnes) and require de before the counted noun.

Interrogative determiner: quel

The interrogative determiner quel (what/which) agrees fully in gender and number.

The exclamative use of quel uses the same agreement: Quelle belle journée ! (What a beautiful day!), Quels enfants charmants ! (What charming children!).

Indefinite determiners: aucun, nul, tel, certain

A small set of indefinite determiners modify nouns with negative, generic, or vague reference.

• aucun / aucune (no, not a single) — singular; agrees in gender. Usually with ne: aucun problème, aucune idée.
• nul / nulle (no, not any) — singular; agrees in gender. More formal than aucun.
• certain / certaine / certains / certaines (a certain, some) — agrees fully. Note position changes meaning: un homme certain (a sure man) vs un certain homme (a certain unidentified man).
• tel / telle / tels / telles (such) — agrees fully.

Multiple nouns: when one determiner serves several

The most important agreement subtlety is what happens when one determiner has to introduce two coordinated nouns. Modern French strongly prefers repeating the determiner before each noun, even when English would happily share a single one.

This is one of the cleanest English-French divergences. English happily says "my father and mother" with a single possessive; French requires mon père et ma mère, with each noun receiving its own determiner that agrees with its own gender. Skipping the second determiner sounds odd.

The exception is when the two nouns refer to a single tightly-bound concept or a fixed phrase: les frères et sœurs (siblings), les pères et mères (parents — formal/legal), en mes nom et qualité (in my name and capacity — set legal phrase). These are formulas where the shared determiner is fossilised.

In rare elevated registers, you may see a single determiner with multiple nouns of the same gender:

This sounds biblical or solemn. Avoid it in everyday speech and writing.

Agreement when the gender of multiple nouns differs

When two nouns of different genders share a single determiner (in the rare contexts where this is allowed), the determiner takes masculine plural. This is the same default as for adjectives modifying mixed-gender nouns.

But in normal modern French, repeat the determiner: son père et sa mère sont très âgés. The single-determiner version is reserved for legal, religious, and elevated literary contexts.

Summary table

Comparison with English

English determiners (the, a, this, my, her) do not agree with their nouns at all in gender or number — except this/that (singular) vs these/those (plural), which is a number contrast. French has both an active gender system and a richer number marking, and the determiner is where these features become most visible. The agreement adds work, but it also adds redundancy: a French speaker who hears cette knows the noun is feminine singular before they hear the noun. This redundancy is part of why French is so phonologically forgiving — gender and number are encoded multiple times across a noun phrase, so even if one cue is missed, the others remain.

Common Mistakes

The fourth error is the most common and the most insidious: French speakers track the possessed noun's gender, not the possessor's. Marie's umbrella requires son parapluie (because parapluie is masculine), even though Marie is female. Reverse the relation and you have Pierre a oublié sa veste — sa because veste is feminine, regardless of Pierre being male. Train yourself to ask: what is the gender of the thing being possessed?

Key takeaways

The dominant principle is straightforward: French determiners agree in gender and number with the noun they introduce. The exceptions are predictable. Quantifiers whose meaning is intrinsically singular (chaque) or plural (plusieurs) are frozen in that number; quantifiers based on a de-phrase (beaucoup de) are entirely invariable; cardinal numerals are mostly invariable except for un/une and the vingt/cent compound rule. Possessives track the possessed noun's gender, not the possessor's. When two coordinated nouns share a determiner slot, modern French prefers to repeat the determiner before each noun. Master these subsystems and the agreement work — once a source of constant intermediate-level errors — settles into a quiet background reflex that costs nothing to deploy.