Picture scene
French chess pieces: explore the equipment before a game
Learn the six French chess-piece names in an eight-spot equipment display. Find le roi, la dame, la tour, le fou, le cavalier, le pion, a clock and a scoresheet.
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In short
The six chess-piece types are le roi, la dame, la tour, le fou, le cavalier and le pion. La reine is another name for the queen, while la dame is the standard chess term. The board is l’échiquier; the whole set of pieces can be called les pièces.
Yellow the idea to rememberBlue French to learn
The illustration displays six individual pieces separately so that you can learn their names before playing. Their positions are a vocabulary arrangement, not a legal starting position or a move puzzle. Two additional targets name the clock and the sheet used to record a game.
Avant la partie : nommer le matériel
Find:
A tower, a bishop and a horse-shaped knight
| French | English chess name | Recognition cue |
|---|---|---|
| Le roi | King | A cross on top in this set |
| La dame / la reine | Queen | A crown in this set |
| La tour | Rook | A small tower shape |
| Le fou | Bishop | A slotted bishop shape |
| Le cavalier | Knight | A horse’s head |
| Le pion | Pawn | A simple rounded head |
Tour means a tower in many contexts, and that image helps you recognise the rook. The English chess name bishop is le fou, not a literal church-title translation. Cavalier names the knight, which often has a horse-shaped head. Learn each as a chess word instead of translating the everyday meanings one at a time.
Use the nouns inside a short introduction
J’aime jouer aux échecs.
I like playing chess.
Voici les pièces. Elles sont blanches.
Here are the pieces. They are white.
La pendule est à côté de la feuille de partie.
The clock is beside the scoresheet.
Aux échecs belongs to jouer: jouer aux échecs means to play chess. After aimer, keep jouer in the infinitive: j’aime jouer aux échecs. You can name the equipment without describing a move. Une partie d’échecs means one game of chess; le jeu d’échecs can refer to the game or a chess set according to context.
To practise recall, point to each piece and say its noun with le or la. Then name the two objects below the pieces. Keep the queen’s two names together as alternatives rather than treating dame and reine as two different piece types.