--- title: My house and my home — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «My house and my home», a lesson of the french course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: The word's gender has nothing to do with you: a boy says ma chambre and a girl says ma chambre too, because chambre is a feminine word. --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/21-my-house-and-my-home/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [French](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/) / My house and my home # My house and my home Lesson 21 of the french course of Mova's primary school: 15 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/french/21-my-house-and-my-home/). - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/21-my-house-and-my-home/1/) — The word's gender has nothing to do with you: a boy says ma chambre and a girl says ma chambre too, because chambre is a feminine word. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/21-my-house-and-my-home/2/) — Picture showing a French penpal round your house: "Voici la cuisine, à côté il y a le salon, et ma chambre est au premier étage" - here is the kitchen, next to it the living room, and my bedroom is one floor up. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/21-my-house-and-my-home/3/) — Floors are counted as in Britain: the floor at street level is le rez-de-chaussée and le premier étage is one floor up, so an American's "first floor" is a French ground floor. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/21-my-house-and-my-home/4/) — Small words do big jobs: chez moi means "at my house", à côté de means "next to", and you say à before a town but en before most countries, like J'habite à Cardiff, au pays de Galles. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/21-my-house-and-my-home/5/) — J'habite dans une maison means "I live in a house"; maison is feminine (une maison) and appartement is masculine (un appartement, a flat). - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/21-my-house-and-my-home/6/) — Le rez-de-chaussée is the ground floor and le premier étage is the first floor up, as in the UK; in the US the "first floor" is the ground floor. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/21-my-house-and-my-home/7/) — La chambre is the bedroom, la salle de bains is the bathroom, and a room in general is une pièce. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/21-my-house-and-my-home/8/) — La cuisine means the kitchen and also the cooking, which is why English says "French cuisine". - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/21-my-house-and-my-home/10/) — You say à before a town (à Inverness), en before most feminine countries (en Écosse, en France), au before masculine countries (au Canada, au pays de Galles) and aux before plural ones (aux États-Unis). - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/21-my-house-and-my-home/11/) — Un jardin (a garden) is masculine and sounds like "zhar-DAN": a soft zh at the start and a nasal ending with no clear n. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/21-my-house-and-my-home/12/) — Le grenier is the attic; the word comes from grain, which was once stored up there. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/21-my-house-and-my-home/13/) — La cave is the cellar, not a cave; a cave in a hill is une grotte. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/21-my-house-and-my-home/14/) — Chez means "at the home of": chez moi (at my house), chez toi (at yours), chez mamie (at granny's). - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/21-my-house-and-my-home/15/) — Le salon is the living room (masculine) and la salle à manger is the dining room (feminine, because salle is feminine). - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/21-my-house-and-my-home/16/) — You say ma chambre, not mon chambre, because mon and ma follow the gender of the word, not of the person speaking. - ← previous: [In the classroom](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/20-in-the-classroom/) - next →: [The town and directions](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/22-the-town-and-directions/) - ↑ back to [French](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/)