It’s a new week, which means a new French word to study! Our word of the week is quelque.
Have a listen to the audio clip below to help you with the pronunciation:
If you’ve been learning French for a while, you might already recognise this word from other common expressions like quelqu’un, quelque chose and quelque part. While these expressions all exist as their own terms for ‘someone’, ‘something’ and ‘somewhere’ respectively, the word that links them all is quelque, meaning some.
You’ll mostly use quelque as an adjective, but spelled in two different ways depending on its adjectival agreement. The masculine and feminine singular forms are exactly the same. To make it plural, you simply add an -s on the end to make quelques.
Another important fact about quelque is that it’s an indefinite adjective rather than a regular one. This means you’re not talking about a certain noun or nouns in particular, but talking about it/them in non-specific terms or about a rough quantity of them.
While its main translation (some) seems pretty clear, for many uses of quelque we might translate it a little differently in English. It could mean a few, whichever and whatever. Let’s get into the examples:
Il a rencontré quelque difficulté à suivre vos instructions. He had some difficulty in following your instructions.
Nous avons acheté quelques oranges au supermarché. We bought some oranges at the supermarket.
Tu trouveras quelque problème avec le repas, comme d’habitude. You’ll find some problem with the meal, as usual.
Après les soldes, il restait quelques vêtements. After the sales, there were a few clothes left.
depuis quelque temps for some time
quelque … que whatever ; whichever
Quelque film qu’elle regarde, elle n’est jamais satisfaite. Whatever / Whichever film she watches, she’s never pleased.
You’ll also need to know about the usage of quelque as an adverb, which has yet another possible sense you could encounter in conversation. We usually translate it as about or around, as in ‘roughly’, to approximate numbers or figures. Adverbs in French are invariable, so the spelling of quelque doesn’t change when used as an adverb:
Si vous voulez acheter ce livre, vous payerez quelque cent euros. If you want to buy this book, you’ll be paying around a hundred euros.
Je crois que Mariam a quelque quarante ans. I think that Mariam is around forty years old.
Sa nouvelle maison est quelque vingt kilomètres d’ici. His new house is about twenty kilometres from here.
We hope our weekly blog has provided you with some useful information about a new French word! We’ve certainly got a few more to share with you in the coming weeks – 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.
