Breakdown of Marie prend des photos de la roche volcanique avec son appareil photo.
Questions & Answers about Marie prend des photos de la roche volcanique avec son appareil photo.
In French, verbs change form depending on the subject.
The verb is prendre (to take). In the present tense:
- je prends – I take
- tu prends – you take (singular, informal)
- il / elle / on prend – he / she / one takes
- nous prenons – we take
- vous prenez – you take (plural/formal)
- ils / elles prennent – they take
Marie is a third‑person singular subject (like elle), so you must use the il/elle/on form: prend.
- Marie prend des photos… = Marie takes photos…
In French you almost always need an article (or determiner) before a noun.
- des photos is the indefinite plural article: it means “(some) photos / pictures” in a general, non‑specific way.
You cannot normally say just ∼Marie prend photos in French; that sounds incomplete. You need:
- Marie prend des photos. – Marie takes photos / is taking photos.
So des here is not stressed in meaning (it’s not “some” vs “many”), it’s mostly there to satisfy French grammar: plural noun → needs an article → des.
Spoken and written, des can mean two different things:
indefinite plural article = “some”
- des photos – some photos / photos (non-specific)
de + les = “of the” (plural)
- les photos des volcans – the photos of the volcanoes
In Marie prend des photos, des is the indefinite plural:
- There is no of idea here.
- It comes directly before a plural noun with no other article: des photos.
In de la roche volcanique, the de is the “of” meaning; there, it is clearly a preposition, not the plural article.
Several points:
Roche (rock, stone as a substance or big mass of rock) is feminine in French: la roche.
- So the partitive / “of the” form is de la, not du.
- du = de + le (masculine).
- de la = used before feminine singular nouns.
You never say de le; it always contracts:
- de + le → du
- de + la → de la (no contraction)
- de + l’ → de l’
So:
- de la roche volcanique = “of the volcanic rock.”
- ∼du roche is wrong because roche is not masculine.
Both are related to “rock,” but the nuance is different.
la roche: rock as a material or mass, often more abstract:
- de la roche volcanique – volcanic rock (as a substance or a mass)
le rocher: a large rock, boulder, cliff, rocky outcrop:
- un rocher au bord de la mer – a rock / boulder by the sea
In this sentence, de la roche volcanique suggests she’s photographing the volcanic rock itself (the rocky material or formation), not necessarily a single big boulder.
Yes, adjectives do agree in French, but here roche is singular, so the adjective is also singular:
- la roche volcanique
- roche: feminine singular
- volcanique: feminine singular (same form as masculine singular)
If it referred to multiple rocks, you’d say:
- les roches volcaniques – the volcanic rocks
Now both roches and volcaniques are plural and take s.
So in this sentence, because we’re talking about rock as a singular mass (la roche), volcanique stays singular.
In French, possessive adjectives (mon, ma, mes / ton, ta, tes / son, sa, ses) agree with the gender and number of the noun possessed, not the person who owns it.
- appareil is masculine singular: un appareil photo
- Therefore you must use the masculine singular possessive: son.
So:
- son appareil photo = her camera / his camera (same form in French)
- If the noun were feminine singular, you’d use sa:
- sa voiture – her/his car
Marie is female, but that doesn’t matter here; son is chosen because appareil is masculine.
In French:
un appareil photo (often shortened to un appareil, or un appareil photo numérique, etc.) is a still photo camera – the device used to take photographs.
une caméra is typically a video camera, used for filming moving images.
So:
- Marie prend des photos avec son appareil photo.
= Marie is taking still pictures with her camera.
If she were filming video, you’d more likely say:
- Marie filme avec sa caméra. – Marie is filming with her video camera.
French word order is somewhat flexible for prepositional phrases, but changes can affect emphasis or sound a bit heavy.
The most natural, neutral order is:
- Marie prend des photos de la roche volcanique avec son appareil photo.
You can move avec son appareil photo earlier:
Marie, avec son appareil photo, prend des photos de la roche volcanique.
→ More literary, or used in narration, with extra emphasis on “with her camera.”Marie prend, avec son appareil photo, des photos de la roche volcanique.
→ Possible, but feels more written or stylistic.
For basic, everyday French, keeping avec son appareil photo at the end is the most natural.
French uses different prepositions with photo depending on the meaning:
une photo de quelque chose = a photo of something (it shows that thing):
- une photo de Marie – a photo of Marie
- des photos de la roche volcanique – photos of the volcanic rock
une photo à quelque chose is not used with this meaning.
À is used more for location, destinations, indirect objects, etc., not for the “of” meaning in photos.
So to say pictures of something, you must use de:
- des photos de la ville – pictures of the city
- des photos de la roche volcanique – pictures of the volcanic rock
In English you might avoid repeating photo (“takes pictures … with her camera”), but in French this repetition is completely normal and not awkward:
- des photos – photos, pictures
- un appareil photo – a camera (literally “photo device”)
Speakers don’t really feel this as clumsy; the fixed phrase appareil photo is processed as a unit. If you want to avoid repetition, you could change the structure, but the original sentence is perfectly natural:
- Marie prend des photos de la roche volcanique avec son appareil photo.
Approximate pronunciations (in a simple English-based way):
roche → roughly like “rosh”:
- ro-: like “roh” but shorter
- -che: “sh” sound, final e is almost silent
- IPA: /ʁɔʃ/
appareil → roughly like “ah-pah-ray” (with a soft y at the end):
- a-: “ah”
- -ppa-: “pah” (double p is not strongly doubled in speech)
- -reil: sounds like “ray” with a light y glide
- IPA: /apaʁɛj/
And appareil photo flows as: ah-pah-RAY fo-TO.