Take a look at these French expressions and their English translations:
la Chambre des représentants
The House of Representativesla chambre d’amis
the guest bedroomla carte des vins
the wine menuune carte d’identité
an identity cardla fonction de l’art
the purpose of artune oeuvre d’art
a work of artles horreurs de la guerre
the horrors of warles crimes de guerre
war crimes
In some cases de is followed directly by a noun:
les crimes de guerre, une oeuvre d’art.
In other cases there’s an article that comes just before the second noun:
la Chambre des (=de + les) représentants, les horreurs de la guerre.
This can be tricky to get right if you’re an English speaker. Because we don’t have the same distinction, it’s not something that comes spontaneously. Here’s the explanation.
The article zero
Articles are grammatical words that help us define what we are talking about. French and English behave in much the same way when we want to talk about a specific object: le, la and les correspond to the in English:
la voiture de sport
the sports car
But there’s a divergence when we want to talk about concepts in a general way. French usually keeps the article.
J’aime les voitures de sport
whereas English drops it (when talking about grammar, the symbol Ø marks the hole left by the absence of an article):
I like Ø sports cars.
Now, that same difference is maintained when we use the word of in Englsh or de in French to create a relationship between two nouns:
The horrors of Ø war
Les horreurs de la guerre
We are talking here about the general concept of war, and the horrors that it generates.
Les représentants américains peuvent défendre leurs projets à la Chambre.
Ø American Representatives can defend their projects in the House.
C’est la Chambre des représentants.
It’s the House of Ø Representatives.
Or again:
La fonction de l’art est de nous faire rêver.
The purpose of Ø art is to make us dream.
When French does use the Ø article
In the above cases, French behaves differently to English. But there is a more limited set of situations in which French nouns don’t have an article before them.
When a second noun classifies the first noun
If we are talking about a guest room, we are talking about a type of room. So in this case it is:
la chambre d’amis
the guest bedroom
You might be thiking that a House of Representatives / la Chambre des représentants is also a type of chamber, but it’s not quite the same thing. It’s a place where Representatives hang out, not a class of room.
Here’s another example. In:
une carte d’identité
d’identité has a classifying role, it’s defining a type of card. It’s not like:
la carte des vins
which is a place where the wines are to be found. (You may be saying to yourself that a wine menu is a type of menu as opposed to the food menu; but in practice, classifying types of menus is not our main purpose when we talk about the wine list, which is always la carte des vins).
On the other hand:
les crimes de guerre
are a type of crime: here we are indeed classifying different forms of crime. It is a different mental operation to that involved when we talk about les horreurs de la guerre. In that case we were not classifying horrors, we were talking about warfare as a general concept and the horrors that it produces. Similarly:
une oeuvre d’art
is a type of work.
Classifier or identifier?
The same nouns can behave differently depending on their function in context.
un clocher d’église
is a type of steeple, a church steeple:
Un clocher d’église s’est effondré pendant la nuit.
However if I am describing a specific church steeple, I am no longer classifying it, I am identifying it, so we have an article before église:
Le clocher de l’église monolithe à Saint-Emilion a été construit au XVIe siècle.
Other uses of the zero article Ø in French
You’ll also find the zero article Ø in French in other circumstances, notably when talking about quantities (beaucoup de fromage).
For more on this subject take a look at Françoise’s Intermediate Lesson Number 20 and Advanced Lesson Number 1.
