#10 : Tout, tous, toute and toutes ... baby shark tout tout tout tout tout tout
Confusing stuffs for Lauren
Bonjour, aujourd'hui on commence avec une vidéo… Baby shark tout tout tout tout tout tout! 🦈 C’est parti!
Just a heads up, I'm not a professional teacher, but rather another learner. The information I share might not be entirely accurate.
1. What we normally know about tout, tous, toute and toutes
Okay, what do you think when you come across tout, tous, toute and toutes?
First, it means, ‘all’ or ‘every’… and, “oh damn depending on gender and number it is changed right?!” Yes, you are absolutely correct and … 😂
I have written my title, baby shark tout tout tout tout tout tout there is a reason for it, have a little guess and let’s go!
2. Tout, tous, toute and toutes
Tout d’abord… let us start from what we normally know!
We all know that depending on gender and number ‘tout’, ‘tous’, ‘toute’ or ‘toutes’ is used accordingly. Meanwhile, be extra vigilant here. Please add one more word in the definition… depending on the gender and number of the noun it changes..
Let’s check examples first:
Masculine singular: tout
Ex: Tout chat (Every cat)
Feminine singular: toute
Ex: Toute femme (Every woman)
Masculine plural: tous
Ex: Tous les chats (All the cats)
Feminine plural: toutes
Ex: Toutes les femmes (All the women)
In this case, they are used as an adjective modifying a noun, then it must agree in gender and number with that noun.
3. Okay, then what about the baby shark tout tout tout!!
A cute quiz, do you think these sentences are grammatically correct? It’s yes or no questions.
Elle est tout simplement magnifique. (She is simply beautiful.)
Ils sont tout simplement géniaux. (They are simply awesome.)
C'est tout simplement délicieux. (It's simply delicious.)
Elle est tout simplement adorable. (She is simply adorable.)
Elle a tout vu. (She saw everything.)
Nous avons tout préparé pour la fête. (We prepared everything for the party.)
The answer is… all are correct. all are YES!
What do you think the reason why, can you guess? Can you feel something that you cannot quite explain like you explained ‘tout’, ‘tous’, ‘toute’ and ‘toutes’?
If you have already come across something like this, you are in the right place!
4. What’s going on?
‘Tout’, ‘tous’, ‘toute’ and ‘toutes’ rely on the gender and number of the noun, which means when these are used as an adjective, then it must agree with the noun that they are referring to.
“Meanwhile, ‘tout’ can also stand alone in certain contexts.”
What? Stand alone? What does it even mean. Just using the one word, “tout”, and it will explain everything that I want to say? Is it a new mind reading AI named “tout”?
I was very confused and angry when I come across with that explanation. What does ‘stand alone’ mean?!
I figured it simply means that there is nothing that will influence ‘tout’ to change in form unlike that is used as an adjective.
There are two occasions that ‘tout’ will remain as is:
When "tout" stands alone as an adverb
When "tout" stands alone as a pronoun
Let’s work with the above examples again:
Elle est tout simplement magnifique. (She is simply beautiful.) - adverb tout
Ils sont tout simplement géniaux. (They are simply awesome.) - adverb tout
C'est tout simplement délicieux. (It's simply delicious.) - adverb tout
Elle est tout simplement adorable. (She is simply adorable.) - adverb tout
Elle a tout vu. (She saw everything.) - pronoun tout
Nous avons tout préparé pour la fête. (We prepared everything for the party.) - pronoun tout
If you read the sentence carefully, there is no specific noun that ‘tout’ is referring to.
What about elle, ils, nous etc? They are subject and it will not influence with the form of ‘tout’.
Yes, we are most of times hard-wired changing verbs according to the subject, and remember that ‘tout’ is not a VERB! 😄
Verbs are influenced by subjects, and when it comes to changing its form depending on fem, macsc, singular or plural of the noun, it is not the subject they are following, but another noun that they want to spice up.
I am so proud of you reading all these through! If this does not make sense, it is natural. If you start reading French more and more you will come across something like this at one point with a question.. okay.. I learnt four forms of tout.. but why only tout is used?! When you are having this question feel free to come back.