Our weekly blog looks at a French word and explains why learners might find it useful or interesting. This week, we’re looking at two words side by side – chaque and chacun.
Before getting into the details, listen to both pronunciations in the audio clips below – first, for chaque:
And here’s the audio for chacun:
Now we can move on to what each word means and why we’re looking at them together. We can use two English translations for either word – each and every. While that sounds simple enough, it’s important for us to use chaque and chacun in the correct grammatical situations in French:
- Chaque – an indefinite adjective
- Chacun – an indefinite pronoun
Although we might translate them similarly in English, we’ll need to study some examples to illustrate the difference between them in French, starting with chaque. You should notice how chaque always sits before the noun:
à chaque fois every time
à chaque fois que whenever; every time that; each time that…
Chaque année nous allions en vacances à Cracovie. Every year we used to go on holiday to Kraków.
Ma fille suit un cours de jiu-jitsu chaque jeudi. My daughter goes to a jiujitsu class every Thursday.
À notre école, chaque élève doit étudier une langue étrangère. At our school, each/every student has to study a foreign language.
Chaque appartement a son balcon privé. Each apartment has its own private balcony.
Let’s move on to the pronoun chacun – just to complicate things slightly, you’ll also see it as chacune, its feminine singular form, according to the gender of the noun it describes.
Interestingly, there are no plural forms at all. This means even with a plural noun subject, you will only use chacun or chacune for the pronoun, whether it’s about people or objects.
Let’s get into some examples:
Ces bagues valent 500 euros chacune. These rings are worth 500 euros each. / Each one of these rings is worth 500 euros.
Do you see here that the subject ‘these rings’ is plural, yet chacune is in the feminine singular?
à chacun(e) son tour (each) one at a time; everyone gets a turn
C’est chacun pour soi. It’s every man for himself.
Comme chacun sait, je déteste la pluie. As everyone knows, I hate the rain.
« Alors les filles, avez-vous parlé avec votre grand-père ? » « Non, mais on lui a chacune envoyé une lettre. » “Well, girls, have you spoken with your grandfather?” “No, but we each sent him a letter.”
Chacune des fraises était délicieuse. Each/Every one of the strawberries was delicious.
Chacun des hommes porte des lunettes. Each/Every one of the men is wearing glasses.
As is often the case with our blog, we’ve learned about how something that looks simple in English can feel a bit trickier in French. But don’t let this put you off… Each and everyone of us has the ability to perfect our French grammar and work towards fluency! See you next time.
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.
