English Translation
He is a bad driver.
Hi! Is it right that this sentence does not use any articles? Why is this? Thanks!
Welcome @ConfierDonne,
This sentence is grammatically correct. That’s the easy part for me, trying to explain why that is… Not so easy :).
I think the main reason is that in this example, “être” is a copular verb, i.e it links a subject to an attribute.
Examples:
He is tall. = Il est grand. (so far, so good)
But:
He’s a doctor. = Il est docteur.
He’s a teacher. = Il est professeur.
He’s a writer. = Il est écrivain.
As you can see, there is no article in French, which is typical when the attribute is a job.
To make things even more “interesting”, whether the subject is a pronoun or an actual noun also matters:
Bob is a friend. = Bob est un ami.
Bob is a bad driver = Bob est (un) mauvais conducteur.
But if we replace “Bob” by “He”, then we have:
He is a friend. = C’est un ami. - Neither “il est un ami.”, nor “il est ami.”, would work here.
He is a bad driver. = “C’est un mauvais conducteur.” or the given translation “Il est mauvais conducteur.”, which is also acceptable.
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Oh wow, that’s very helpful. Thank you so much!
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