okayyy so, all starting from our friend ghita, we decided to open a new thread to learn french!
DISCLAIMER; i am not french, i do not claim to be. i am not fluent in french, i do not claim to be :D:D
i just wanted to help ghita out, and i hope that i can! so if i make mistakes, you frenchies, (or fluenties) out there can stop and smack me on the head :hap:
so, we’ll start with the basics:
je = i tu = you (singular) il = he elle = she on = one* nous = we vous = you (plural, or respectful, i.e. to an adult, or someone older than you etc) ils = they (masculine, or “they” for a mix of males and females) elles = they (feminine)
like in general terms, eg “on entering the mosque, one takes off their shoes”; we could also translate that as “we”, meaning, again, in general “…we take off our shoes” << more used in english haha, i have to say “on” is also used to avoid the passive, like “the apple was eaten” when you don’t know who did it, in french, you COULD say that, technically, but MUCH better would be “one (meaning someone) has eaten the apple”
“on” can sometimes be translated as “you”, too. Like the “you” I use in the next sentence:
Note that if you have a group of 99,999,999,999 women and one man you would still use ils, because there is one man.
(i added the smiley face because i was bored hehehe)
from my experience, with practise is when you can tell whether a verb is regular or irregular; i used to always guess just until i got it right! besides, a lot of the time, you somehow just know if it sounds right or not
well, as my notes say, we’ll go onto irregular verbs later, but for now we’ll concentrate on regulars
regular verbs are conjugated depending on their endings
RULE: when conjugating an -er, -ir, or -re verb, you take OFF that ending, (e.g., when working with an -er verb, we will take off the “er” from the infinitive form, and add on the endings that we learn)
ALSO, il, elle, and on ALWAYS conjugate the same :hap: OH, and so do ils and elles, so that makes it easy! yaaaay
so, let’s start with -er verbs:
je -e
tu -es
il/elle/on -e
nous -ons
vous -ez
ils/elles -ent
again, any questions, ask
and i have decided i will end each post with a nice, random french phrase
so, phrase for today:
Oh my French grammar is bad, but I remember we didn’t learn -re verbs but -dre verbs and there were to different kinds of -ir verbs. The best thing for verbs is to buy a Beschrelle (1 L’Art de conjuguer) but that book is only French but has 12,000 verbs in it.
ohhh really? i never knew this! well if anybody has more details, they can post them
but i can assure you, you can survive knowing simply three types of regular verbs… i managed wal7amdollah
but you are right about -dre verbs, from the top of my head, i don’t know an -re verb that isn’t -dre
i guess it works with each with 2 letters on the end, easy to remember :hap:
yeah but logic and French verbs also doesn’t belong together. But the book is still very good, you just look up a verb and know how it get conjugated in any person or time.
yeahhh! that’s useful! i only have a small COLLIN’S dictionary, it doesn’t have conjugations. but my brother has a normal dictionary with a few important conjugations in the middle section. and for the rest of the verbs in the dictionary, it refers you to one of the middle ones, as they conjugate the same, so it’s good
but hey, today we’re all okay, because you can just type a word on google and it’s conjugated :hap:
ooooh, thankyou for that link, nuwwara! it seems really good! i usually type the word in google, and for a lot of the words, the first hit is like “avoir - french verb conjugation” and that’s the one i use
although, i gotta recommend to you guys my best friend; wordreference.com
it has definitions, examples, allll sorts of things, and if your word isn’t there, it’s guaranteed, pretty much, to be on a forum by a previous person in your position; and if not, you can start your own post on the forums :hap: it’s great! i don’t know how i would have gotten through last and this year without it! in fact, i have it open right now as i mark my brother’s french work
ohhh wow, i never knew it had arabic! i only ever use it for french, because i have sufficient understanding to be able to decide if a word makes sense in a sentence, or the context is right, etc. i don’t explore and use it to try to talk russian or spanish or whatever, because i have no clue
well, any non-frenchies can, using the notes on -er verbs, conjugate for me (NO INTERNET AID, PLEASE, LOL) “jouer”; this means “to play”
well, not all conjugations, that would get boring for us all, so say “he plays”, and “you play” (to a group of people) :hap:
next, ir verbs:
je -is*
tu -is*
il/elle/on -it*
nous -issons
vous -issez
ils/elles -issent
NOW, there are a lot of tenses and things like that, in french, that use this structure; where je and tu (so 1st person singular) ends in S, and il, elle and on (so 2nd person singular) ends in T
and a lot of people confuse that, so here’s the secret
S comes before T in the alphabet, so S is FIRST and T is SECOND :hap:
random phrase for today:
“mais, ca va pas, non?” - it means literally like “but it’s not okay?”, so it’s when somebody says something that you totally don’t agree with, it’s kinda like saying “are you sure you’re feeling okay?!” (which is really familiar in english; “are you crazy?!” basically, but not so strong)
i personally LOVE that phrase, has to be one of my favourites :hap:
wasalaam ghita
no problem, love, i hope it hasn’t started too basic!
glad to help :hap:
so today, we will do -re verbs:
je -s
tu -s
il/elle/on (no ending)
nous -ons
vous -ez
ils/elles -ent
so, lemme give an example, i’ll conjugate “entendre”, which means “to hear”
j’etends
tu entends
il entend
nous entendons
vous entendez
ils entendent
(so you can see, for 2nd person singular, you take off the -re ending and do nothing to conjugate that!)
and you notice the plural endings are all the same as -er verbs that makes it easy, it’s pretty standard! they’re the same as -ir verbs, too, except they add the -iss part before the endings
so, we’ve done all the regular verbs, let’s recap with a simple table:
you see how i was saying, the last 3 rows are all the same (except for the -iss for ir verbs) just remember IRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR (sounds like GRRRRRRRRR) because -ir verbs are so annoying, they ruin it all :lol:
Mon anglais est nul, donc si je passe tout près de quelques notions, ne me grondez pas. Les verbes en français: 1er groupe:Tous les verbes en “er” à l’infinitif sauf le verbe aller. 2ème groupe: Les verbes en “ir” à l’infinitif et qui prennent “ss” au pluriel du présent, à l’imparfait et au participe présent. 3ème groupe: Tous les verbes qui n’appartiennent ni au 1er ni au 2ème groupes. Ce sont des verbes irréguliers.
“on” is also used to avoid the passive, like “the apple was eaten” when you don’t know who did it, in french, you COULD say that, technically, but MUCH better would be “one (meaning someone) has eaten the apple”
