The major complication comes from the fact that not all verbs follow these patterns. If you master just the verb conjugations for these three groups you will be able to use the vast majority of French verbs with no problem at all!īut of course, it would be no fun it was that easy… Irregular French Verbs The result is that in practice, the nous form is seldom used in normal speech and you could almost get away with not learning it (although, of course, I’m not suggesting you shouldn’t bother!)Īs you can see, things are much simpler than at first sight. On corresponds to something like the English ‘one’, as in ‘one is not amused’ and it uses the same verb form as il/elle. The French Pronoun OnĬoupled with this is the fact that in spoken French, it is very common to use the pronoun on in the place of nous. The same is true of attends and attend: the ‘ds’ and the ‘d’ are silent – you just say ‘atten’. Similarly, finis and finit are pronounced the same (the final ‘s’ and ‘t’ are both silent, meaning you pronounce the word as ‘fini’). So, when speaking or listening, instead of six forms to remember, there are really only three.Īnother way to look at it is to say that only the nous and vous forms are different in spoken French, the rest are all the same. This means that although you have to learn to write je regarde, tu regardes, il regarde and ils regardent, when you speak, the pronunciation is identical (all of them are pronounced like regarde). However, although many of the words are written differently, a lot of them are actually pronounced the same, making things much easier than it first appears, at least in spoken French.įor example, with -er verbs, the -e, -es and -ent forms are all pronounced the same way! This might make even this list of regular conjugations look a little intimidating for a beginner. er verbs -ir verbs -re verbs Verb Conjugations And PronunciationĪs you can see, there are more changes than in English. Let’s look at how to conjugate the three groups of regular French verbs in the present to see how it works. In French, however, it is a little more complicated since there are a few extra changes. In the earlier examples, we saw that in English, the only change occurs with the he/she/it form (the ‘third person singular’) where we add an ‘s’ – (e.g. Of these, the vast majority of verbs belong to the -er group, and any new verbs in French are automatically attributed to this group. ![]() This makes these regular verbs a logical place to start.įrench regular verbs are divided into three groups, and the group to which they belong is determined by the ending of the infinitive (the equivalent of the ‘to’ form in English, as in ‘to look’). In French, the vast majority of verbs are regular, that is, they follow entirely predictable rules. Regular French Verbs – The Three Conjugations It will all become much clearer as we work through some examples. If it all seems a little abstract at this point, don’t worry. Of course, there’s a little more to it than just that, and I’m going to spend the rest of this article giving you an outline of the basics of French verb conjugation. Instead of ‘I look’, ‘you look’, ‘he looks’, in French, we say: This is conjugation – the way that verbs change depending on who is doing the action. In English (and in French), verbs change according to who is doing the action.įor example, we say, ‘I look’ and ‘you look’ but ‘he looks’. ‘Conjugation’ is a fancy-sounding grammatical term, but if you speak English (which, if you’re reading this, you do), you’re already using conjugation, even if you don’t realise it. Click here to find out more and try it out for free. If you want to improve your French quickly and having fun doing it I recommend French Uncovered, my comprehensive beginner programme that teaches you through StoryLearning®. The course covers everything you need to know as a beginner in French (including verb conjugation). ![]() Here, I discuss how to go about studying them in the most efficient and painless way so that you can spend more of your time actually using and enjoying the language!īy the way, speaking of enjoying the language (and learning grammar naturally at the same time!)… However, that’s not to say there are no challenges, and for many, one of them is mastering French verb conjugation.įrench verb conjugations are something you will have to tackle if you want to learn to speak the language, but as long as you approach them in the right way, there is no reason why they should pose any particular problems. You may have heard that French is a difficult language to learn, but in reality, for English speakers, learning to speak French is actually relatively easy.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |