de ou à? (1)

Bonjour à tous!

I am going to talk about the use of de and à today. They can be very confusing...

No matter where you learn French, you must come across "jouer de" and "jouer à" in the first semester. Then, here comes "faire de"... Remember:

jouer de + un instrument de musique

jouer à + un sport

faire de + un sport (OMG! This is the confusing part!!!) 

ex. Il aime jouer de la guitare.

ex. Il aime jouer au tennis.

ex. Je fais du vélo tous les jours.

Let's take a look at another use:

une tasse de café ou une tasse à café?

Both are correct, but they have different meanings.

de is used to talk about le contenu, similar to avec, while à refers to la fonetion, like pour.

Therefore, une tasse de café means a cup of coffee, while une tasse à café means a coffee cup. 

How about une tasse en procelaine?

en means fair avec, talking about la matière. So, une tasse en procelaine means a procelain cup.

Let's look at more examples:

une brosse à dents  (a toothbrush)
une brosse à cheveux (a comb)

une brosse à chaussures (a shoe brush)

Un verre en cristal est cher. (A crystal glass is expensive.)

Using the correct prepositions is very important because if you use the wrong one, what you are talking about may sound very weird. For instance, if you tell a shopkeeper, "Je voudrais voir ce sac de main.", I really don't know how the person will react. Of course, he / she must be smart enough to know that you want to look at the handbag, but not a bag of hands, but still... very weird indeed.

Can you guess the meaning of the following words?
un sac de bonbons
un sac à dos

un sac en papier

The answers are: a bag of candies, a backpack and a paper bag. 

However, please pay attention to un verre à pied which has nothing to do with our feet. C'est un verre à pied:

The French use different glasses for different drinks. Let's learn some vocabulary items:

C'est un verre à eau.

C'est un vere à champagne.

C'est un vere à vin.

C'est un vere à cognac.

C'est clair? (Um... oui... j'espére...)