Question 1

Why do we say pas d'argent instead of pas de l'argent?

Accepted Answer

In French, when you have a negative sentence expressing zero quantity, articles like de l', du, or des change to just de, or d' before a vowel. Because the client has absolutely no money, the partitive article de l' drops its l' and becomes just d'.

Question 2

Why are there two words with apostrophes in this sentence?

Accepted Answer

French drops the final e in certain short words when the next word starts with a vowel, replacing it with an apostrophe to make pronunciation smoother. Here, ne becomes n' before the vowel in a, and de becomes d' before the vowel in argent.

Question 3

Does the word Ce mean this or that?

Accepted Answer

It can mean either! French uses Ce for both this and that before masculine nouns like client. If you specifically needed to point out this client here versus that client there, you could add -ci or -là to the end of the noun, but usually the context is enough.

Question 4

I thought argent meant the metal silver. Does it also mean money?

Accepted Answer

Yes! The word argent literally translates to silver, but it is also the most common everyday word for money in French. You can easily tell which one is meant based on the context of the sentence.

Ce client n'a pas d'argent.

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