Determinants before adjectives

Question

En effet, être capable de parler le français accroîtra votre employabilité, ce qui ouvrira vos chances de travailler dans différents pays francophones.  My instinct was to put a 'de' in front of 'differents' in this sentence. Can I do it?

Céline Pickard · Accepted Answer

Bojour Blaise,
That's an excellent question! Here, "différents " works differently as it functions like a determiner rather than an adjective.
In French, the rule that "des" becomes "de" before an adjective applies to "pure" adjectives that describe a noun:

J'ai visité de beaux pays = I visited beautiful countries
La France a de grandes villes = France has big cities

But here, "différents" is not an adjective: instead, it means "several/various" and functions like a determiner. Therefore, you can replace "différents" with similar determiners, such as "plusieurs, divers, etc":
dans plusieurs pays / dans divers pays
-> So, there's no "des" to transform in the first place and "différents" in the sentence above works the same way.
Therefore, the best option for this sentence is "dans différents pays francophones..." as "différents" is already functioning as a determiner rather than an adjective.
I hope this is helpful.
Bonne journée !