Introduction Structure Words Exercises

Content Words and Structure Words

Introduction

To understand French texts, you're going to have to learn a lot of words. But it's more important to learn some words than others. Words like the, a, it, and but are found in almost every text, whereas words like apple, water and spoon, even though they seem very common, will only be found in some texts.

So a useful way of looking at the words of languages like English and French is to divide them into structure words (like the), and content words (like apple). In the following text, the structure words are in black italic and the content words are in blue.

French

English

Le Fantôme de l'Opéra, roman que Gaston Leroux publia en 1900, nous entraîne dans une extraordinaire aventure qui nous tient en haleine de la première à la dernière ligne.

The Phantom of the Opera, a novel which Gaston Leroux published in 1900, draws us into an extraordinary adventure which keeps us in suspense from the first to the last line.

Structure words (in black italic above) are further classified into Determiners, Prepositions, Conjunctions and Pronouns. We'll be looking at them later. They are very common, and there are only a couple of hundred of them. Most of them are short, worn down from constant use. They mostly indicate grammatical relations.

Content words (in blue) are further classified into Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives and Adverbs. There are tens of thousands of them in a language and so they make up most of the words in a dictionary. Proper nouns (names of people and places) are not usually a problem for understanding, but are also Content Words.

Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives?

If you are just starting French, you don't need to distinguish among nouns, adjectives, prepositions, etc. We'll concentrate on the words themselves, rather than their classification. The classification will be important later in the course, however.

What is interesting about structure words and content words is that each group makes up almost exactly 50% of any text. Try counting the words in the Phantom of the Opera texts above, or in any other.

As you can imagine, if 50% of a text is made up of content words, and there are only a couple of hundred of them in a language (it depends how you count), it's in your interest to make sure you know all those words.

Structure Words

Le Fantôme de l'Opéra, un des romans que Gaston Leroux publia au début du siècle, nous entraîne dans une extraordinaire aventure qui nous tient en haleine de la première à la dernière ligne.

Let's look at the structure words in the above text, grouping them a little

French	le, l', la	un, une	de, du	à, au	que, qui	en, dans	nous
English	the	a, an, one	of, from	to, at	which, who	in, into	us, we

To practice these words, go over the text several times, working out its meaning, and getting used to the structure words.

Exercises

Content Words and Structure Words

Introduction

French

English

Le Fantôme de l'Opéra, roman que Gaston Leroux publia en 1900, nous entraîne dans une extraordinaire aventure qui nous tient en haleine de la première à la dernière ligne.

The Phantom of the Opera, a novel which Gaston Leroux published in 1900, draws us into an extraordinary adventure which keeps us in suspense from the first to the last line.

Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives?

If you are just starting French, you don't need to distinguish among nouns, adjectives, prepositions, etc. We'll concentrate on the words themselves, rather than their classification. The classification will be important later in the course, however.

Structure Words

Le Fantôme de l'Opéra, un des romans que Gaston Leroux publia au début du siècle, nous entraîne dans une extraordinaire aventure qui nous tient en haleine de la première à la dernière ligne.

French

le, l', la

un, une

de, du

à, au

que, qui

en, dans

nous

English

the

a, an, one

of, from

to, at

which, who

in, into

us, we

To practice these words, go over the text several times, working out its meaning, and getting used to the structure words.

Exercises