Tout, toute, toutes and tous: all in French

How do you say ‘all‘ in French? A simple question but a long answer. All can be used in two different contexts:

  • All the children.
  • I want all (of them).

The first one stands with a noun (the children) and the second one stands alone or adds ‘of them’. In English, it’s twice all. In French, no.

All in French with nouns

In French, every noun (like ‘children’) is male or female.Male nouns use ‘le’ for ‘the’ and female ones ‘la’. It depends on the gender which form of ‘tout’ you’ll have to use. For example:

  • Les hommes: tous les hommes (all men)
  • Les femmes: toutes les femmes (all women)

And what about one man or one woman? In English, we use ‘a whole man’ or ‘a whole woman’. In French, we use a form of tout:

  • Tout un homme (a whole man)

    The whole universe: tout l’univers
  • Toute une femme (a whole woman)

As you see, whether it’s a male or a female word is again important to know whether it’s tout or toute.

All standing alone

To use all standing alone, you use a form of tout as well. However, the ending changes, depending on what you’d like to say. If it’s ‘all of them’ or ‘every single one of them’, it’s tous. If it means ‘everything’, it’s tout:

  • Je veux tout. (I want everything)
  • Ils sont tous là. (All of them are there)

Note that with ‘tous’, you’ll need another word to say who’s concerned. In English, it’s translated as ‘of them’. Here, it’s ‘ils’. They are all there. Two more examples:

  • Ils les mangent tous (they eat all of them)
  • Nous sommes tous là (we are all there)

Exercises

Let’s do some exercises. Fill in the blanks:

  1. Ils font _.
  2. Je travaille _ la journée.
  3. Je les vois _.
  4. Il y a _ un groupe.
  5. _ les groupes sont là?
  6. J’aime _ les maisons.

Solutions:

tout – toute – tous – tout – tous – tous

All in Dutch: al, alle, alles, allen, allemaal

Learn the Dutch language from Belgium, also called Flemish

So when an English-speaking student is learning the Dutch translation for ‘all’, all hell breaks loose. How do you explain to a student there are five (!) ways to translate ‘all’?

Let’s see them all:

  1. Is that all?
  2. All are here. (as in people)
  3. All people are here.
  4. All the people are here.
  5. We are all here.

All as in everything

If you can replace the ‘all’ by everything, you use ‘alles’.

  • Is dat alles? (Is that all)

All as in everyone

If you can replace the ‘all’ by everyone, you use ‘allen.’ You can also use iedereen.

  • Allen zijn hier. (all are here)

All plus nouns

When you’re using all plus a noun, you use ‘alle.’ There’s nothing standing between de ‘all’ and the noun.

  • Alle mensen zijn hier. (all people are here)

All plus article plus nouns

If there’s an article or a pronoun (this, that) in between the all and the nouns, it’s ‘al.’

  • Al de mensen zijn hier. (all the people are here)
All or everything?

All separated from the noun

When all stands behind the noun, use ‘allemaal’. Allen can also be used in case of people.

  • We zijn allemaal hier.  (we are all here)

Exercises

(words: de studenten, de leraars, werken met, naar België, was, het)

  1. All students go to Belgium.
  2. The students all go to Belgium.
  3. All go to Belgium.
  4. All teachers work with all the students.
  5. Was it all, students?

Solutions

  1. Alle studenten gaan naar België.
  2. De studenten gaan allemaal naar België.
  3. Allen gaan naar België.
  4. Alle leraars werken met al de studenten.
  5. Was het alles, studenten?