French Adverbial Expressions of Quantity

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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)?

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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.

French Expressions of Quantity: Weight and Volume

French Partitive Articles and 4 Ways to Use DE

French Vocabulary List – Basic Food and Drinks