French speakers..please help?im a bit confused..?

Question

how do you know when to say "son soeur" or "sa soeur" or "ses soeurs" .. how do you know when to say son, sa or ses? and is there a rule with these?

also.. because the next word (soeur) starts with s also, can you shorten it.. because i know with some words you can do that.. how do you know with which words you can shorten it with?

Answer 1

yes there is definately a rule. as you should have come across in french everything has a gender. so if you are saying 'her sister' then you use sa soeur because sa is the feminine word and we are saying 'her' sister not his. and then its the exact same for son. its the masculine version so it would be used for 'his sister'. then ses is if you are talking about kore than one sister so plural "his/her sisters" ses soeurs. so you just put all those pronouns or watever they are into a table like this:

masc..........feminine....plural

mon ..............ma................mes

ton..............  ta ................. tes            

son ............ sa...................ses

notre............ notre.............nos

votre............votre...............v...

*leur............ leurs..............leurs

*not sure about the last line though

hope that helps and sorry cant assist with shortening of words...

Answer 2

The possessive has to match the noun in number and gender.  So because soeur is feminine, it is always sa soeur or ses soeurs, and never son soeur.  Sa soeur means his sister or her sister.  Ses soeurs means his sisters or her sisters.  

The only exception to this is if the noun begins with a vowel you always have to use the masculine possessive to avoid awkward pronounciations.  So you would never say sa amie; it would always me son amie, even though amie is feminine.  

As far as shortening...you can't shorten soeur -- it's already only one syllable.  How would you make it shorter?

Answer 3

An important difference between French and English is that in French it is the gender of the noun that determines which form of the possessive adjective to use, not the gender of the subject. This is particularly confusing for English speakers when talking about him/her/it.  

In English the form of the possessive adjective depends on the subject not the noun. Thus we say "his sister" or "her sister" depending on the gender of the subject.

But in French it will be "sa soeur" without regard to whether you mean "his sister" or "her sister" since the noun soeur is feminine.

Son, sa, and ses can each mean his, her, or its depending on the context. "Ses" is used for a plural noun. In your example it would be  "Ses soeurs" [his/her sisters]

The exception is when a feminine noun begins with a vowel, in which case, the masculine possessive is used in order to keep from saying something like ma amie, where the flow of the sentence would be broken.

Answer 4

As all answers above - basically you need to know whether the nouns (sister, home, boat, cat, bird, computer, plate etc ) are masculin or feminin in French. There are unfortunately no rules for that, you just need to learn it every time you learn a new word.

Exemples:

une soeur/sa soeur

une maison/sa maison

un bateau/son bateau

un chat/son chat

un ordinateur/son ordinateur

Rachel likes her cat

Rachel aime son chat (son  because a cat is masculin)

Jack lives in his house

Jack habite dans sa maison ( sa because a house is feminin)

Rachel plays with her sisters

Rachel joue avec ses soeurs ( 'ses' because soeurs in this case in plurial. 'Ses' = plural, regardless of the gender of the nouns, so slightly easier!)

exemple:

Jack plays with his sisters.

Jack joue avec ses soeurs

One rule!

une assiette/son assiette. Although 'assiette' is feminin, you have to put 'son' simply because assiette start with a vowel.(a,e,i,o,u) . You can't have 'sa assiette' bacause of the two a together. So all nouns starting with a vowel will have 'son' in front of it.

Good luck to digest all that, you'll see once you practice, it is not that hard :)

Answer 5

1.there is nothing to shorten in these matters.

2. masc: leur,

    feminin: leur,

    plural: leurs.

3. The only way to know is to learn vocabulary patiently, with the gender. Still, u r lucky, if u had chosen german, u would have the "neutral gender" possibility too.

Answer 6

the difficult part is learning which words are feminine and which ones are masculine, but since "sister is feminine you would say sa soeur, because it applies to the soeur not the person whose sister it is... in English we say his sister and her sister but in french it's sa ... also ses is plural so it's for their sister... as to shortening of the words, well they combine the words... if a word starts with a vowel like tree for example the article is combined with the word and becomes l'arbre instead of le arbre...