Which preposition follows the verb: à, de, or nothing

The prepositions page covers what prepositions mean (where à puts you, where de takes you from). This page is a different question: which preposition a given verb demands. That has nothing to do with meaning — it is a property each verb carries, and it has to be learnt verb by verb.

Pulling out every correction where only a preposition changed gives 1410 of them, and 877 carry no grammar label at all — the pattern has been treated as scattered typos rather than as one thing worth teaching.

Three groups

🔑 There is no logic to derive — it is memorised. One shortcut helps: a verb's preposition never varies, so learn them fused. Not "participer", but "participer à".

🔴 a or à: the single most frequent error on the site

a is the third person of avoir (has); à is the preposition (at / to / in). One accent apart, two completely different words.

Our corrections fix this pair 32 times, and in both directions:

Direction 1: the preposition à written as a

Direction 2: the verb a dropped out of il y a (16 times)

💡 One-second test: does "has / there is" fit? If yes it is the verb a (il y a = there is); if not it is the preposition à. This is the same family as ou / où on the relative pronouns page — in French an accent is contrastive, not decorative.

Verbs taking à

🔴 The first three are where we lose the most (inviter 15, participer 14, assister 6), and all three are cases where English takes no preposition: ❌ participer une activité　✅ participer à une activité ❌ t'inviter mon mariage　✅ t'inviter à mon mariage

Verbs taking de

🔴 venir de has two senses and neither may lose the de: ❌ je viens en Chine (that means "I come to China")　✅ je viens de Chine (I come from China) ✅ je viens de commencer (I have just started) — this is the recent past.

⚠️ One more high-frequency case: stating an amount takes est de. ❌ Le prix est 200 euros　✅ Le prix est de 200 euros Neither English nor Chinese has this structure, so almost nobody produces it unprompted — and it is unavoidable when writing to ask a price, place an ad or complain.

Verbs that take nothing at all

This group is the nastiest, because English pushes you to add a preposition:

⚠️ demander splits: the thing is direct (demander un renseignement), the person takes à (demander à quelqu'un).

After a quantity word it is always de, never des

beaucoup · peu · trop · assez · plus · moins · autant — a noun after any of these takes bare de:

The test: des = de + les (those specific ones). "A lot of courses" is indefinite — there is no "those" — so only de works. We fix this 18 times, the third most frequent item on this page.

⚠️ des also becomes de when an adjective moves in front of a plural noun (de nouvelles langues) — that rule lives on the indefinites page.

🔴 In a list, repeat the preposition before every item

English says "a lot of music, dance and good food" with one preposition. French repeats it in front of each item:

The same rule governs à: inviter à manger et à danser.

💡 It shows badly in an essay, because listing is something TCF writing asks for constantly — and it is trivially checkable: wherever et joins two items, look at the first one and copy its preposition forward.

Classic traps ⚠️

One line to remember

A preposition is a property of the verb, so learn them fused — not participer, but participer à. If "there is / has" fits, it is the verb a; if not, the preposition à. Neither sense of venir de may lose its de. The verbs English gives a preposition to (tell / look at / listen to / wait for) take none in French. After a quantity word it is always bare de, never des. And in a list, write the preposition again in front of every item.