Learn Hardcore French: Paul a trop mangé de pizza, et maintenant son ventre est lourd. - Paul ate too much pizza, and now his stomach feels heavy.

In compound tenses like the passé composé, short adverbs (such as trop, bien, mal, beaucoup, peu) normally go between the auxiliary verb and the past participle:

Paul a trop mangé.
Il a bien travaillé.
Elle a beaucoup parlé.

So a trop mangé is the most natural word order.

a mangé trop is not wrong, but it is less common and feels a bit heavier or more marked. It can sound like you’re insisting on the “too much” at the end, but in everyday speech people would almost always say a trop mangé here.

Is there a difference between a trop mangé de pizza and a mangé trop de pizza?

Both are grammatically correct, but the nuance is slightly different:

Paul a trop mangé de pizza.
Focus: he ate too much (and what he ate too much of happens to be pizza). The “too much” applies to the action of eating.
Paul a mangé trop de pizza.
Focus: he ate too much pizza in terms of quantity. The “too much” directly modifies the amount of pizza: trop de pizza.

In everyday speech, both can be used to mean essentially the same thing, but a trop mangé de pizza is a bit more idiomatic in this exact sentence.

Why is it de pizza and not de la pizza or des pizzas?

Here, de pizza is used after trop and expresses an indefinite quantity:

trop de pizza = too much pizza
beaucoup de pizza = a lot of pizza
peu de pizza = little (not much) pizza

The pattern is:

quantity word + de + noun

So you say:

trop de pizza
beaucoup de pizza
assez de pizza
peu de pizza

You do not say trop de la pizza in this structure.

de la pizza would be the partitive article (some pizza) when there is no quantity word:

Paul a mangé de la pizza. = Paul ate some pizza.

des pizzas would mean multiple individual pizzas:

Paul a mangé des pizzas. = He ate pizzas (several whole pizzas).

In this sentence, the idea is an indefinite amount of pizza, so trop de pizza is correct.

Why is it de pizza and not de la pizza when we know which pizza it is?

Even if everyone knows which pizza is meant (for example, the pizzas at a party), the grammar after a quantity word stays the same:

trop / beaucoup / peu / assez / plus / moins + de + noun

So we still use de, not a definite or partitive article:

Il a mangé trop de gâteau. (even if it’s “the cake” you’re all sharing)
Elle boit beaucoup de vin. (even if it’s a specific wine)

So:

Paul a trop mangé de pizza.

is correct, even if you’re talking about some very specific pizza everyone knows about.

Why is it son ventre and not something like sa ventre or le ventre?

French possessive adjectives (son, sa, ses) agree with the gender and number of the noun possessed, not the person who owns it.

ventre (belly/stomach) is masculine singular.
So you must use son: son ventre.

Examples:

son ventre = his/her belly (because ventre is masculine)
sa main = his/her hand (because main is feminine)
ses yeux = his/her eyes (plural)

You could also say Paul a le ventre lourd (“Paul has a heavy belly”), using le ventre instead of son ventre, which is a very common pattern for body parts:

Il a mal au ventre. = His stomach hurts.
Il a les yeux rouges. = His eyes are red.

But in the sentence given, son ventre simply emphasizes “his belly” more personally.

What is the difference between ventre and estomac in French?

Both relate to the stomach area, but their use is different:

ventre is more everyday and can mean belly / tummy / stomach area.
It’s common in informal speech and in many idiomatic expressions:
- avoir mal au ventre = to have a stomachache
- avoir le ventre plein = to have a full belly
estomac is more anatomical or medical, referring to the organ (the stomach), but also appears in some fixed phrases:
- avoir mal à l’estomac = to have stomach pain (more precise, organ-focused)
- avoir l’estomac fragile = to have a sensitive stomach

In the context of eating too much, ventre sounds more natural and colloquial. Son ventre est lourd feels like “his belly feels heavy / he feels weighed down in his stomach.”

Why is it est lourd and not something like a lourd ventre?

French does not usually say “avoir + adjective + noun” in this way (a lourd ventre is incorrect). Instead, it uses:

être + adjective with the noun as the subject:
- Son ventre est lourd. = His belly is heavy.
Or an idiomatic avoir + le/la/les + body part + adjective structure:
- Paul a le ventre lourd. = Paul has a heavy belly.

Both Son ventre est lourd and Paul a le ventre lourd are correct, but:

Son ventre est lourd. emphasizes the state of the belly.
Paul a le ventre lourd. emphasizes Paul’s condition.

A lourd ventre would sound ungrammatical.

Why is it a mangé (passé composé) and not mangeait (imparfait)?

a mangé is the passé composé, used for:

Completed, one-time actions
Events that move the story forward

In this sentence, Paul’s eating too much pizza is a completed event in the past that explains his current state (his belly is heavy).

mangeait is the imparfait, used for:

Ongoing or repeated actions in the past
Background descriptions or habits

Compare:

Paul a trop mangé de pizza, et maintenant son ventre est lourd.
→ He ate too much (at some point), result: now his belly is heavy.
Quand il était étudiant, Paul mangeait trop de pizza.
→ When he was a student, Paul used to eat too much pizza (habit).

So a mangé fits because it refers to one specific overeating event with a direct result.

Why is there a comma before et maintenant in French?

French punctuation allows a comma before et more freely than English does, especially:

to mark a pause in speech,
to separate two clauses when the writer wants to show a slight break.

So:

Paul a trop mangé de pizza, et maintenant son ventre est lourd.

is perfectly normal in French. You could also write it without the comma:

Paul a trop mangé de pizza et maintenant son ventre est lourd.

Both are acceptable. The comma simply adds a small pause between the cause (eating too much pizza) and the consequence (his belly is heavy).

Would Paul a trop mangé de la pizza ever be correct?

In standard French, after trop, the normal structure is:

trop + de + noun

So:

trop de pizza is correct.
trop de la pizza sounds wrong in standard usage.

You might occasionally see trop de la pizza in some regional or very informal speech, but it’s considered non‑standard. For correct French, keep:

Paul a trop mangé de pizza. ✅
Not Paul a trop mangé de la pizza. ❌