Learn French: De ce côté, il y a un mur. - On this side, there is a wall.

De ce côté, il y a un mur.

On this side, there is a wall.

Breakdown of De ce côté, il y a un mur.

Questions & Answers about De ce côté, il y a un mur.

Wait, doesn't côté mean "next to", like in à côté de?

côté actually just means "side" as a standalone noun. The complex preposition you learned, à côté de, literally translates to "at the side of" (meaning "next to"). In this sentence, De ce côté is just using the noun to mean "On this side".

Why do we use De instead of Sur for "On this side"?

Prepositions rarely translate word-for-word! While English says "on this side", French uses de (which usually means "of" or "from") to say De ce côté. It helps to just memorize this as a set phrase rather than trying to translate the preposition literally.

Why is it ce côté and not cet côté or cette côté?

côté is a masculine noun, so it uses the standard masculine word for "this": ce. You would only use cet before a masculine word that starts with a vowel (like cet arbre for "this tree"), and cette is exclusively for feminine words.

Would il y a change if there were multiple walls on this side?

No, it stays exactly the same! il y a conveniently means both "there is" and "there are". If you wanted to say "On this side, there are walls," it would simply be De ce côté, il y a des murs.