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On the provincial student loans brochures that I am reading, the French version says "Gratuité des frais de scolarité pour les étudiantes et étudiants admissible", and the English version says "Free Tuition for eligible students".

Using Wordreference, I translated "Gratuité des frais de scolarité" literally as "[Something free] of fees of education".

Wordreference's entry for "gratuité" surprised me, though:

gratuité nf (fait de ne pas être payant) free adj
Note: There is no noun in English. "Gratuité" will always be translated with the adjective "free", as in "free education", or "free room" in a hotel offer.

Questions:
1. Are there other French nouns that have no corresponding noun in English?
2. I had guessed that "gratuité" was an adjective, because it looked like a past participle, because it ended in "é". Are words ending in "é" most often past participles, or are they often instead nouns?
3. Why is it "des frais", but "de scolarité"? That is, why is it "des" for one of the words, but "de" for the other word?

silph
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2 Answers2

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  1. Are there other French nouns that have no corresponding noun in English?

Yes I guess many other exist (depaysement for example)

  1. I had guessed that "gratuité" was an adjective, because it looked like a past participle, because it ended in "é". Are words ending in "é" most often past participles, or are they often instead nouns?

Many other word finish with é (or ée) matinée, lycée, amitié, liberté, volonté ... So yeah, words finishing with é are not all adjectives.

  1. Why is it "des frais", but "de scolarité"? That is, why is it "des" for one of the words, but "de" for the other word?

Because "frais" is a plural and "scolarité" is singular. There are many fees for that particular thing.

Calins
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  • but if the reason is that "scolarité" is singular, should it not be "de la scolarité", instead of "de scolarité"?
    • – silph Jun 06 '18 at 15:58
  • actually, WordReference does have an entry for dépaysement, where there are corresponding English nouns as translations! (http://www.wordreference.com/fren/d%C3%A9paysement)
    • – silph Jun 06 '18 at 17:00
  • It is frais de scolarité and not frais de la scolarité because we are not talking about a well-identfied scolarité: it could be any scolarité. Same as eg jus de pomme, maison de campagne, cours de français, livre de cuisine, etc. – Greg Jun 07 '18 at 04:02
  • @Greg but then why is it "des frais" instead of "de frais"? – silph Jun 08 '18 at 09:17
  • Because frais is in the plural and it is not just any frais, they are well-identified: so in "gratuité des frais de scolarité", des is the contractions for de les. Note also that les frais in the sense of "expenses, costs" is always used in the plural in French. – Greg Jun 08 '18 at 15:09