Welcome to Collins’ French word of the week, where we pick a useful word and explain all the need-to-know details. Our word today is seul.
Have a listen to the audio clip to hear the correct pronunciation:
While we can translate this word in quite a few different ways, it’s always around the same theme or idea. The main translation of seul is alone, but it could also translate as on your own, by yourself, lonely, sole or only. We’ll cover plenty of different cases in our examples.
Seul is an adjective (a word describing a noun), but it can be used adverbially too. As French nouns all have a gender and can be plural or singular, adjectives need to change spelling to make them agree with the noun they’re describing. The adjective seul therefore has four different possible spellings:
- Masculine singular seul
- Feminine singular seule
- Masculine or mixed plural seuls
- Feminine plural seules
Normally French adjectives go after the noun they describe, but seul is part of a fairly small group of adjectives which come before the noun. We have an Easy Learning French Grammar page with more information about adjective word order.
Let’s have a look at some examples using seul as an adjective:
On a fait un safari et on a vu un seul lion. We went on safari and only saw one single lion.
C’est la seule personne qui aime la pizza. They’re the only one who likes pizza.
« Êtes-vous seuls ? » « Oui, nous sommes seuls. » “Are you on your own?” “Yes, it’s only us.”
Voici le seul endroit où il existe cette espèce de fleur. This is the only place where this type of flower exists.
d’un seul coup all at once; in one fell swoop
se sentir seul(e) to feel lonely/alone
Now that you’ve seen how to use the adjective, we can take a look at seul used adverbially:
Il est en colère – on devrait lui laisser seul. He’s angry–we should leave him alone.
Est-ce tu es parti seul ? Did you leave by yourself?
parler tout seul to talk to oneself
One important point to raise is that while nearly all adverbs in French are invariable – that is, they don’t change their spelling to agree with nouns – seul must always agree with the subject of the sentence, even when it’s being used adverbially:
Elle n’aimerait pas vivre toute seule. She wouldn’t like to live all on her own.
Mes enfants ont fait ce gâteau à eux tout seuls. My children made this cake all by themselves / without any help.
To learn more, head over to our Easy Learning French grammar section about adverbs in French.
Thanks for joining us for this week’s blog – rest assured that you’re certainly not alone on your journey to learning French! See you here again next week.
Written by Holly Tarbet, freelance copywriter and editor.
All opinions expressed on this blog are those of the individual writers, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or policies of Collins, or its parent company, HarperCollins.
