Most of the time, French expressions of quantity are followed by DE (or D’ when the word begins with a vowel), even when the noun that follows is plural. You may feel tempted to use DES – DE LA – DU – DE L’ after these expressions, but the change to DE is necessary. Expressions of quantity represent just one instance in French when DE is required.
Click here for a lesson on the different ways to use DE, and get your list of expressions of quantity for weight and volume here.
👉 Tu vas boire combien de jus?
👉 How much juice are you going to drink?
* EXCEPTION* The definite articles LE – LA – LES may be used with these expressions to indicate the quantity of a specific item. Remember that DE LE = DU, and DE LES = DES.
👉 Ils ont bu pas mal du jus que j’ai acheté.
👉 They drank a good bit of the juice that I bought.
THE PRONOUN “EN”: Since all of these expressions indicate quantity, and they are followed by de, you can simply replace DE + NOUN with the pronoun EN.
👉 Est-ce que tu as assez de boissons? / Do you have enough drinks?
👉 Est-ce que tu en as assez? / Do you have enough (of them)?
Here’s a list of common adverbial expressions of quantity:
Practice and master them with this QUIZLET study set
assez de | enough |
autant de | as many |
beaucoup de | a lot |
combien de | how many / how much |
la majorité de* | the majority |
la minorité de* | the minority |
moins de | less |
pas mal de | quite a few / a good bit |
un peu de | a little |
peu de | few |
plein de | full of / a lot of |
la plupart de* | the most |
plus de | more |
tant de | so many |
un tas de | a bunch |
tellement de | so many |
trop de | too many |
There are many other ways to express quantities such as weight and volume. You’ll find that many of these are used with food and drinks. Click here for a long list of ways to express these types of quantities.
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