Question 1

Why doesn't the French sentence use Le plus... le plus... to mean "The more... the more..."?

Accepted Answer

When expressing proportion in French (the more X, the more Y), you don't use definite articles before plus or moins. You simply use Plus on its own at the beginning of each clause. Using le plus here would be a direct translation mistake from English.

Question 2

Could I change the word order to plus de vocabulaire vous mémorisez?

Accepted Answer

No, the word order is strict. In this structure, the subject and verb must immediately follow Plus (plus vous mémorisez). Any direct object, like le vocabulaire, has to come after the verb. Literally, the French structure is "More you memorize the vocabulary."

Question 3

Is the 's' at the end of Plus pronounced in this sentence?

Accepted Answer

No, the 's' in Plus is silent here because the following word, vous, begins with a consonant. You would only pronounce the 's' (as a "z" sound) to make a liaison if the next word started with a vowel or a mute h, like in Plus il lit.

Question 4

Why do we need the word le before vocabulaire? In English we can just say "memorize vocabulary".

Accepted Answer

In French, nouns almost always need an article, even when speaking about things in a broad, general sense. While English often drops the article for general concepts or uncountable nouns like "vocabulary," French requires the definite article le (or la / les).

Plus vous lisez, plus vous mémorisez le vocabulaire.

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