Breakdown of Il y a du citron dans l'eau.
l'eau
the water
dans
in, inside
il y a
there is / there are
du
some (partitive, masculine)
le citron
the lemon
Questions & Answers about Il y a du citron dans l'eau.
Doesn't il mean "he" and a mean "has"? Why does this mean "there is"?
Il y a is a very common fixed expression in French that means "there is" or "there are". Even though the literal translation is "it there has", you should just memorize il y a as a single chunk!
Why is there a du before citron? Can't we just say Il y a citron?
In French, nouns almost always need a little word (an article) in front of them. Because we are talking about an unspecified amount of lemon (like "some lemon"), we use the partitive article. Citron is masculine, so we use du.
If there were multiple whole lemons in the water, would it still be du citron?
Why is it l'eau instead of la eau?
The word for water, eau, is feminine, so you would normally use la. However, because eau starts with a vowel sound, the a in la is dropped and replaced with an apostrophe. This makes the words flow together smoothly to create l'eau.
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