Breakdown of J'ai vu un beau fauteuil chez mon cousin.
je
I
un
a / an (masculine)
chez
at the home of / at
avoir
to have
voir
to see
mon
my (mon, ma, mes)
le cousin
the cousin (male)
beau
beautiful / handsome
le fauteuil
the armchair
Questions & Answers about J'ai vu un beau fauteuil chez mon cousin.
Why does this sentence use chez instead of a French word for "house"?
The preposition chez translates directly to "at the home of" or "at the place of" a person. Saying chez mon cousin is the standard, natural way in French to say "at my cousin's house". You don't need a word like maison here at all!
Could I say à la maison de mon cousin instead?
Why does the adjective beau come before fauteuil instead of after it?
Most French adjectives go after the noun, but short, common adjectives describing Beauty, Age, Number, Goodness, or Size (often remembered as the BANGS rule) go before it. Because beau describes beauty, it comes right before the noun it modifies.
What verb is vu from?
Vu is the past participle of the irregular verb voir (to see). In this sentence, it pairs with the helper verb avoir to form the past tense called the passé composé. Together, J'ai vu means "I saw" or "I have seen".
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