A2 · Prepositions · about 4 minutes
Countries, cities, directions
The gender of the country picks the preposition.
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“New to me”: the explanation first, then practice. “Test myself”: 3 short questions – get at least two right and you go straight to the harder exercises.
Words you will need5
They appear in this topic’s examples and exercises and are new at this point on the learning path.
- juinJune
- l’hiverthe winter
- baslow
- passerto pass
- le volthe theft
Understand
RememberFirst the country’s gender, then the preposition.
- Signal words
- en
- au
- aux
- à
The form
The forms and what they mean
Each row gives the meaning first, then the form in French.
| in Paris | à Paris |
| in France | en France |
| in Portugal | au Portugal |
| in the Netherlands | aux Pays-Bas |
| in Iran | en Iran |
| from Japan | du Japon |
The rules one by one
The form this topic is about
Cities take à, for «in» and «to» alike.
Je travaille à Lille depuis deux ans.I have worked in Lille for two years.
Feminine countries take en, masculine ones au.
Il habite en Italie, elle habite au Danemark.He lives in Italy, she lives in Denmark.
Plural countries take aux — the ones English gives a «the».
Ils partent aux États-Unis en juin.They are going to the United States in June.
A country ending in -e is nearly always feminine; le Mexique is the famous exception.
Nous allons au Mexique cet hiver.We are going to Mexico this winter.
Example sentences
Elle est née en Belgique et vit à Genève.She was born in Belgium and lives in Geneva.
Ce fromage vient des Pays-Bas.This cheese comes from the Netherlands.
Nous passons l’été au Portugal.We are spending the summer in Portugal.
1 more example sentences
Le vol pour le Canada dure huit heures.The flight to Canada takes eight hours.
The trap English speakers fall into
Watch out
Because English says «in» for everything, the first word that comes to hand gets used. The choice depends on the gender of the country, and the gender is in the dictionary: la France gives en France, le Portugal gives au Portugal. Learn a country without its article and you cannot build the preposition at all — which is why «I'm going to Portugal» is the sentence that catches people out most often.
Quick check
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The full explanation
Read it all · about 1 min
With cities it is à for both where and to where: je suis à Berlin, je vais à Berlin. English uses «in» and «to» and keeps them apart; French does not distinguish them here at all.
With feminine countries — almost all of the ones ending in -e — it is en: en France, en Allemagne, en Espagne. With masculine countries it is au: au Portugal, au Canada, au Maroc. With plural ones, aux: aux États-Unis, aux Pays-Bas.
So the thing that decides is the country's gender, and English gives you nothing — «in» covers every case and no English dictionary lists a gender for France. The practical consequence is that a country has to be learnt with its article, exactly as any other noun does: la France, le Portugal.
There is one small foothold. English does keep an article on a handful of countries — «the Netherlands», «the United States», «the Philippines» — and those are precisely the plural ones that take aux here. Where English says «the», French says aux.
Before a masculine country beginning with a vowel it is still en: en Iran. And origin reverses the whole set: de France, du Portugal, des États-Unis.
The verbs on this page, in every form: être · habiter · passer · durer · venir · aller · travailler · partir