Prepositions of Place & Time
Prepositions of Place & Time
French locates things with prepositions placed before the noun, the same direction English works in — so the basic word order here should feel familiar, even where the exact words and their coverage differ.
Grammar Comparison
Grammar Comparison
Prepositions come before the noun, matching English word order
sur la table (on the table) — preposition first
on the table
French prepositions — à, dans, sur, sous, chez, devant, derrière, entre, avant, après — always come before the noun they govern, just like English 'on', 'under', 'behind'. The word order is one thing you don't have to relearn here; the challenge is simply that French carves up meaning differently, so a single English preposition doesn't always map onto a single French one.
chez: a preposition with no single-word English equivalent
chez moi (at my place), chez le médecin (at the doctor's)
at my place, at the doctor's
chez means 'at the home/place/practice of' — it's used only before a person or a profession, never a plain location noun (you can't say chez l'école). English has to paraphrase it as 'at my place' or 'at the doctor's', using a possessive plus an implied noun rather than a single dedicated word. Treat chez as its own small category with no direct one-word translation.
avant / après: before nouns and clauses alike
avant le dîner (before dinner) / après avoir mangé (after having eaten)
before dinner, after having eaten
avant and après work with a plain noun (avant le dîner) or with an infinitive clause. Note the asymmetry: avant takes a plain infinitive (avant de manger, 'before eating'), while après takes a past infinitive (après avoir mangé, 'after having eaten') — a small but very common construction worth memorizing as a fixed pattern, since English 'before eating' / 'after eating' treats both symmetrically with a plain '-ing' form.
Vocabulary
Vocabulary
| French | Pronunciation | English |
|---|---|---|
| à | ah | at / to |
| dans | dahn | in / inside |
| sur | sewr | on |
| sous | soo | under |
| chez | shay | at the place of |
| devant | duh-VAHN | in front of |
| derrière | deh-ree-AIR | behind |
| entre | AHN-truh | between |
| avant | ah-VAHN | before |
| après | ah-PREH | after |