Il y a is one small phrase that says both "there is" and "there are": Il y a un livre. Il y a deux chaises. Combined with your numbers and nouns it describes any room, bag or picture — and it powers the counting questions every beginner course lives on.
| French | English | Say it |
|---|---|---|
| Il y a… | There is… / There are… | eel ee ah |
| Il y a un livre. | There is a book. | eel ee ah uh(n) LEEVR |
| Il y a deux chaises. | There are two chairs. | eel ee ah duh SHEHZ |
| Il y a trois crayons. | There are three pencils. | eel ee ah trwah kreh-YOH(n) |
| Qu’est-ce qu’il y a ? | What is there? | kess keel ee AH |
Respellings follow the course’s say-it key; the stressed syllable is in capitals. Print this lesson’s flashcards (PDF) — the words on the front, the English and respelling on the back.
Each word is read twice — say it back in the gap. Computer-generated voice; credits on the course page.
English switches between "there is" and "there are"; il y a never changes. The number or article after it does all the work: il y a une porte, il y a douze élèves.
Count anything, color anything, and report what a room contains — that is Units 1–3 working together, and the workbook’s Unit Check 2 territory. On paper: describe your kitchen in three il y a sentences.
This free course is the reading half. The writing half — write-in lessons, daily practice pages with built-in review, self-checks and a full answer key — is the companion workbook series, The French Ladder: one workbook per module, fifteen in all, released band by band with the Basic band (Modules 1–5) first.
Turn this lesson’s words into flashcards, then space your reviews — the two habits the research behind our study guides backs hardest.
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