To make a French plural, the article does the work: le, la and l’ all become les; un and une become des. The written -s on the noun is almost always silent, so les livres sounds like "lay LEEVR" — your ear hears the plural in the article, not the ending.
| French | English | Say it |
|---|---|---|
| les | the (plural, all genders) | lay |
| des | some (plural of un/une) | day |
| les livresthe final s is silent | the books | lay LEEVR |
| des chaises | some chairs | day SHEHZ |
| les élèvesthe s of les links before a vowel: lay-z | the pupils | lay zay-LEHV |
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.
Le livre and les livres differ in sound only at the front: luh vs lay. Train your ear on the article and plurals stop being guesswork.
You can now greet someone, introduce yourself, and name a room full of things in the singular and the plural, with the right gender. That is the workbook’s Unit Check 1 — the written version lives on paper, where it belongs.
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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