Breakdown of Sur cette île, une colline verte est couverte d'herbe et d'arbres.
Questions & Answers about Sur cette île, une colline verte est couverte d'herbe et d'arbres.
In French, for islands you normally use sur to mean on:
- sur cette île = on this island
- sur une île tropicale = on a tropical island
Dans cette île would sound strange in most contexts, because dans suggests being inside something enclosed (a box, a room, a building).
À cette île is also not used to mean on this island. À is used with proper names of islands or countries:
- à Tahiti, à Cuba, à Madagascar
but: sur cette île, sur l’île de Tahiti
So in this sentence, sur cette île is the normal, idiomatic choice.
The demonstrative adjective has to agree with the gender and number of the noun:
- ce: masculine singular before a consonant (ce livre)
- cet: masculine singular before a vowel or silent h (cet arbre, cet hôtel)
- cette: feminine singular (before any letter) (cette maison, cette école)
- ces: plural for both genders (ces maisons, ces livres)
The word île is feminine, so you must use cette:
- ✅ cette île
- ❌ ce île
- ❌ cet île
In French, most adjectives (especially colors) normally come after the noun:
- une colline verte = a green hill
- une maison rouge = a red house
Only certain common adjectives often come before the noun (e.g. grand, petit, beau, vieux, bon, mauvais, jeune, joli, nouveau).
Color adjectives such as vert / verte normally follow the noun.
Une verte colline is possible but sounds poetic or literary, not neutral everyday French. The standard, neutral order is une colline verte.
Couverte is the past participle couvert used like an adjective after être, and it must agree with the subject:
- subject: une colline → feminine singular
- participle/adjective: couverte (feminine singular)
Compare:
- Le sol est couvert de neige. (masc. sing.)
- La colline est couverte d’herbe. (fem. sing.)
- Les collines sont couvertes d’arbres. (fem. plural)
So:
- masculine singular: couvert
- feminine singular: couverte
- masculine plural: couverts
- feminine plural: couvertes
Normally no. With verbs like couvrir (to cover), remplir (to fill), orner (to decorate), French uses de, not avec, for what something is covered/filled/decorated with:
- couverte de neige = covered with snow
- rempli d’eau = filled with water
- orné de fleurs = decorated with flowers
Avec would sound odd here, as if you were describing a tool or accompaniment rather than the material covering the hill. The natural expression is:
- ✅ est couverte d’herbe et d’arbres
Two things are happening here:
Use of bare de after couverte de…
With verbs/adjectives like couvrir / couvert(e) de, French usually uses de- noun without an article to talk about an indefinite covering:
- couvert de neige (not de la neige)
- couvert de fleurs
So we say:
- couverte d’herbe et d’arbres (general, non‑specific grass and trees)
De l’herbe / des arbres would point more to particular grass and trees that are already known in the context, which isn’t intended here.
Elision to d’
De becomes d’ before a vowel or silent h:- de + herbe → d’herbe
- de + arbres → d’arbres
So the form d’herbe et d’arbres is both grammatically normal and stylistically natural here.
In French:
l’herbe is usually a mass noun, meaning grass in general, so it’s normally used in the singular:
- de l’herbe, beaucoup d’herbe = (some / a lot of) grass
You only see des herbes when you mean different kinds of herbs, plants, seasonings, etc.
- de l’herbe, beaucoup d’herbe = (some / a lot of) grass
un arbre / des arbres is a countable noun. We normally think of several trees, so the plural arbres is natural when a hill is “covered with trees”.
So: d’herbe (mass) and d’arbres (many individual trees).
Yes, you can say:
- Sur cette île, il y a une colline verte couverte d’herbe et d’arbres.
This version with il y a puts the focus on existence: On this island, there is a green hill…
The original:
- Sur cette île, une colline verte est couverte d’herbe et d’arbres.
uses une colline verte as the subject right away, and focuses more on its state (the fact that it is covered with grass and trees). Both are grammatical; the il y a version sounds a bit more typical as the start of a description.
Formally, est couverte is être + past participle, which is the pattern of the passive voice:
- L’herbe couvre la colline. (active)
- La colline est couverte d’herbe. (passive)
However, in everyday use, être couvert(e) de… is often felt as a description of a state, like an adjective:
- La colline est verte.
- La colline est couverte d’herbe.
So grammatically it’s the present passive, but functionally it just describes what the hill is like now.
The circumflex (^) in île mainly reflects historical spelling:
- Old French/English: isle
- Modern French: île
In many words, the circumflex marks where an s used to be (hôpital ← hospital, forêt ← forest, etc.).
For î / i, in modern standard French the pronunciation is usually the same sound [i], with no strong difference in length or quality. So île is pronounced like ile would be, but French orthography keeps the circumflex to show the word’s history and sometimes to distinguish meanings in other pairs (e.g. sur vs sûr).