About L'An/L'Année

Question

I am trying to find some more examples about the difference between l'an/l'année and I am now confused. For example, I want to find out whether to use l'an/l'année in "I got pregnant the same year I got married." in French. Google Translates says "Je suis tombée enceinte la même année de mon mariage." and another translation software called DeepL says "Je suis tombée enceinte l'année de mon mariage."

Are these sentences correct? If so, why do we use année instead of an? Because I am very convinced an/année indicates a particular point of time here. Thanks for answering.

Accepted Answer

Hi Winston,
Yes, both sentences are correct, and you cannot use 'an' in this instance as it means some time during the year you got married which could be for instance 1992.
Hope this helps!

Answer

L'année describes the duration of the year between (say) January and December.L'an describes a period of 12 months. There are 10 years in a decade for example.

Answer

You use an to refer to refer to a year as a whole, undifferentiated and countable item. But if you're going to "look inside" of the year or refer to its duration, its individuality, then you use année.

Il y a dix ans que nous nous sommes mariés. -- Ten years ago we got married.
C'était l'année où nous sommes revenus des E.U. -- It was the year when we returned from the US.