When prepositions à or de are followed by definite articles le or les in French, these prepositions "contract" with them to form one word. Learn how to contract à / de with the definite articles in French The use of "de" / "du" depends on whether "personnel" is definite or not. In our case, it isn't so one must use "du". If "personnel" is definite, "de" should be used as in: une compression de personnel de la comptabilité. 1 I've been learning French for a few years, but one question has always bothered me, that is, I don't know when to use "de" with articles and when to not. For example, if I wanted to say "responsibility of teachers", as in To be a good teacher, you need to understand the responsibilities of teachers. Should I say: Masculine: du; Feminine: de la; Contracted (m or f in front of vowel or mute h): de l' + There is only one plural partitive article: des. It's used with nouns that are always plural. Using partitive articles. The partitive article is needed when talking about an unknown or unspecified quantity of something uncountable. Par exemple… This lesson is a detailed explanation of when to use the preposition de all by itself and when to use the indefinite article, partitive article, or de + definite article (which looks like the partitive - but isn't. Ugh!) There are four types of constructions that lead to the de vs du, de la, des confusion. Click these links for lessons with DE ou DU en français: le complément du nom. Quand on a un complément du nom, on peut parfois mettre DE ou DU, selon le sens qu'on veut donner à l'expression. Souvent, on lie deux noms en utilisant simplement la préposition DE: Un professeur de français. Un bouquet de fleurs. Prépositions: de la / du / des La préposition de : Elle est suivie de la + nom féminin : Il vient de la campagne. Elle est suivie de l' + nom masculin ou féminin : Il vient de l' école. Mais de + le n'existe pas car il se contracte en du + nom masculin : Il revient du travail. However when these are followed by the definite articles le or les, then these prepositions will contract and form one word. Let's take a look at the following example. Imagine that you wish to say "I'm going to the park". le parc. Je vais à le parc. [wrong] Je vais au parc. [correct] I'm going to the park. The French partitives of du, de la, de l' and des mean 'some' and 'any' in English. Practise constructing sentences using these partitives. Part of French Articles, prepositions and Podsumowanie: DU, DE LA, DE L' i DES wyrażają niepoliczalność. Przykłady, które podałam do tej pory, dotyczyły tej sytuacji, gdy DU, DE LA, DE L' i DES wyrażają coś niepoliczalnego: jedzenie i picie, pogodę lub abstrakcję. Rodzajniki ściągnięte DU, DE LA, DE L' i DES, czyli articles contractés I85TG4.