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Are argent and oignon masculine or feminine? Why do we use de l' instead of du? And why do we use des oranges instead of de l'oranges?

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Hi,

They're both masculine. We say de l'argent for a phonetic reason, I believe, so as not to have two vowels following each other.

We use des oranges because they're countable (it's a plural, after all), while de l'oignon isn't, for example in "Il y a de l'oignon dans la sauce", we don't know how many onions were used to make the sauce.

But! We can also say des oignons if we're counting them, as in "J'ai acheté des oignons au marché". In the same way, we also say de l'orange if we're talking about putting some in a cake, for example.

Hi Christine,

Thanks for the explaination. Merci!

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