C'est une ancienne loi.

Sentence Discussions French
#1
English Translation

This is an ancient law.

What I understand is that ancien(ne) changes meaning according to whether before or after the noun. If it is before the noun, it means former (ex-). If it is after the noun, it means old or ancient. This sentence appears to violate that rule.

Should it be C’est une loi ancienne?

#2

Thanks for letting me know! :slight_smile: – I was not consciously aware of this, but it seems to often be the case indeed…

The way I look at it:

If I wanted to describe a very old law, I could say:
C’est une très vieille loi.
C’est une loi très ancienne. (For whatever reason, “très ancienne” sounds more natural to me than using only “ancienne” here.)

I think I would use " C’est une ancienne loi.",
to describe a law that is no longer in use today.

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#3

Thanks, this ancien(ne) thing has been making me crazy. I’ve read about it on several websites, but the implementation escaped me.

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#4

Your rule (before/after the noun) sums it up pretty nicely I think.

Basically, if "ancien(ne) is right before the noun, try to see if it matches one of these meanings:
Ex- (former), talking about people OR formerly owned/used/in use, but no longer (often replaced), talking about things/objects.

If ancien(ne) is right after the noun:
It is likely to mean very old, as in ancient past, or maybe dating back to a certain period of History:

  • Les temps anciens (a long long time ago)
  • Des meubles anciens (it’s not just “old furniture”/ des vieux meubles)
  • C’est de l’histoire ancienne (literally: This is ancient history. In French, we use this expression to describe something that happened a (very) long time ago, maybe something that you’d rather forget about, or something that doesn’t really matter to you anymore).

I’d say that ancien(ne) is not very commonly used to simply mean “old” (i.e that has existed for quite some time). I’m not saying it can’t be done, but I can’t think of too many examples.
Typically, I think “vieux” /“vieille” is more common in that sense.

If there are specific sentences/examples you’re having trouble with, just ask.