Breakdown of Nous avons des sacs bleus et des maillots bleu clair.
et
and
le sac
the bag
nous
we / us (object pronoun)
des
some (plural indefinite)
avoir
to have
clair
bright
bleu
blue
le maillot
the jersey
Questions & Answers about Nous avons des sacs bleus et des maillots bleu clair.
Why doesn't bleu clair have an -s at the end to match the plural noun maillots?
Why does bleus get an -s while the bleu in bleu clair does not?
Because bleus is a simple, single-word color adjective, it follows the normal rule: it agrees with the masculine plural noun sacs. However, as soon as you add a modifying word like clair to make a compound color, the entire phrase becomes invariable and stays in the default masculine singular form.
Could we place the color adjectives before the nouns, like des bleus sacs?
No. While some French adjectives go before the noun (like beauty, age, number, or goodness), color adjectives almost always come directly after the noun they describe.
Why do we use des here instead of de? I thought plural nouns sometimes take de.
You only use de (or d') instead of des when a plural adjective comes directly before a plural noun, like in the phrase de jolis sacs. Since the adjectives in this sentence come after the nouns, we use the standard plural indefinite article des.
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