- Forum >
- Topic: French >
- La petite fille?
La petite fille?
I'm extremely confused as earlier I had heard the phrase, "la petite fille" now, it just struck me that, shouldn't it be "la fille petite"? Isn't the french grammatical structure noun, then adjective? For example, you wouldn't say "le noir cheval, but you would say"le cheval noir".
Would anyone mind explaining if it's different depending on certain cases or if this is just an exception? Thanks :)
7 Comments
1390
Yes in French most adjectives go after the noun, but some come before it. The best way to remember is to use the acronym BANGS, which stands for Beauty-Age-Number-Goodness-Size. Any adjectives which fall into these categories go before the noun. Par example, c'est un bon homme (he is a good man)
That is a great acronym and memory clue! I never heard of it. Now I am feeling tempted to create a sentence with all of them.... Let me see. . .
La belle jeune premiere adorable petite chatte mangeait mes chaussures!
Indeed, but to say 'he is a good man', we actually say 'c'est un homme bon', because we do not want it to sound like 'bonhomme', which has another meaning.
It is not easy to say 'she is a good woman', though. 'C'est une bonne femme' is almost an insult (because of the modern meaning of 'bonne femme', which is rather pejorative). 'C'est une femme bonne' is more or less OK, but nowadays 'bonne', when applied to women, means 'very attractive, sexy' (curvy, in general). To avoid this problem, we would probably rephrase. For example: 'C'est une femme très bonne, très gentille/serviable'.
If you want, you can also check this:
https://www.duolingo.com/comment/853323$comment_id=22079588
(edit: I'm sorry, I should have written the content of the above comment. It's a simple explanation of the 3 types of adjectives regarding their placement and, in addition, the DL user mentions two links that I personally found very useful)
