de petites filles ou des petites filles

I know that there is a rule we have to change the article "des" into "de" when we want to give an adjectif

before the noun in plural, but i heard about two exceptions, i mean adjectives: petit and jeune. So we won't say : "de petites filles" but "des petites filles", and not "de jeunes filles" but "des jeunes filles".

Is that true? Or we can use the two froms?

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Permalink Reply by Pauline on November 14, 2011 at 2:36pm

So thanks, cause i even asked about it my teacher and she didn't know:)

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on November 14, 2011 at 7:15pm

There's soooort of a rule that states that, but it's not quite as simple as you suggest unfortunately.

The rule is something more like this: in somewhat formal usage, and with a plural adjective before a noun, "de" is used instead of "des" if the adjective functions as an 'independent' adjective with its literal meaning, and the adjective and the noun don't make up a 'set expression'.

So for example:

"J'ai vu DE jolies fleurs dans le jardin."
"Je t'envoie DE gros bisous."
"J'ai passé DE longs hivers dans ce pays."

However, if any of the conditions mentioned above do not hold, then speakers tend to use "des". So in other words:

- "des" tends to be used in everyday informal usage
- if the adjective and noun form some kind of "set expression", then "des" is typically used, e.g. "Il y a des grands magasins en ville", where "grand magasin" means a 'department store'

I suspect that in reality, what you will also get is simply a fair amount of variation. After all, what constitutes the "literal" meaning of the adjective is open to some interpretation. I suspect that if you poll 100 French speakers on which version they prefer in e,g. "Il a bu de(s) grands bordeaux", "Il connaît de(s) grands auteurs" etc, you probably won't get much of a consensus.