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:
- Ils font _.
- Je travaille _ la journée.
- Je les vois _.
- Il y a _ un groupe.
- _ les groupes sont là?
- J’aime _ les maisons.
Solutions:
tout – toute – tous – tout – tous – tous