French word of the week: nouveau

With another week comes another French word. In our blog today, we’re looking at the adjective nouveau.

To listen to the pronunciation of nouveau, check out our audio clip below:

As you may already be aware, nouveau means new in English. As an adjective, nouveau is a word we can use to describe a noun or pronoun. However, unlike English, French adjectives change spelling to agree with the number and gender of the noun they’re describing. Nouveau is the base form, which is the masculine singular. But while the meaning does not change, you will also see these spellings of nouveau:

• Feminine singular: nouvelle
• Masculine plural: nouveaux
• Feminine plural: nouvelles
• Masculine singular before a word beginning with a vowel or mute ‘h’: nouvel

For extra information on how adjective agreement works, visit our Easy Learning French Grammar page on making adjectives agree with the noun they describe.

This blog might have reminded you of a previous edition of word of the week about the word neuf, which can also be translated into English as new. We should reiterate that while nouveau and neuf both mean new, they are not interchangeable. We cover this in more detail on our blog about neuf, but generally:

• Nouveau often describes something subjectively or abstractly new (this usually means that it’s new to you).
• Neuf always describes something objectively new.

Now that we’ve got all of these explanations out of the way, let’s get on to some examples of nouveau in action:

J’habite à Paris depuis trois mois et je ne me suis pas fait de nouveaux amis. I’ve been living in Paris for three months and I haven’t made any new friends.

Mon élève de film sera le nouveau Goddard, j’en suis sûr. My film student will be the new Goddard, I’m sure of it.

Est-ce que vous voudriez venir chez nous pour le nouvel an ? Would you like to come over to ours for New Year?

Ce genre de musique est nouveau pour moi. This genre of music is new to me.

Voici ma nouvelle femme. This is my new wife.

(faire) de nouveau (to do) again

If you see Nouveau with a capital letter, this denotes that it’s used as part of a proper noun, in the same way we might use New in English:

l’Art Nouveau Art Nouveau (an art movement from the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries)

Nouvelle-Guinée New Guinea

Nouvelle-Calédonie New Caledonia

Nouveau-Mexique New Mexico

Finally, you might also encounter nouvelle as a feminine noun in both singular and plural forms:

As-tu lu les nouvelles aujourd’hui ? Have you read the news today?

J’aime bien cette nouvelle de Borges. I really like this short story / novella by Borges.

Looks like you’ve managed to add a brand-new French word to your vocabulary! We’ll be here again next week with another word, see you soon

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.