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Verbs

-er Verbs

Regular -er Verbs

Regular -er verbs have no change to spelling of the root and the endings form the following pattern:

  Singular Plural
First -e -ons
Second -es -ez
Third -e -ent

An example verb ending is “aimer”:

Singular Plural
j’aime nous allons
tu aimes vous aimez
il/elle/on aime ils/elles aiment

Some important -er verbs to know:

Root Change -er Verbs

Some -er verbs have changes made to the root of the verb, but otherwise have no change. The following changes will occur:

Some -er verbs that have root changes:

  Singular Plural
First -is -issons
Second -is -issez
Third -it -issent

An example verb ending is “finir”:

Singular Plural
je finis nous finissons
tu finis vous finissez
il/elle/on finit ils/elles finissont

Some important -ir verbs to know:

Irregular -ir Verbs

Some of the most commonly used -ir verbs are irregular. The above endings won’t necessarily apply to these verbs. The ending patterns for irregular -ir verbs are still standard, but different, and the roots can change slightly:

  dormir (“to sleep”) sortir (“to go out”) servir (“to serve”) sentir (“to feel”) courir (“to run”)
je dors sors sers sens cours
tu dors sors sers sens cours
il/elle/on dort sort sert sent court
Nous dormons sortons servons sentons courons
Vous dormez sortez servez sentez courez
Ils/elles dorment sortent servent sentent courent

Other Verbs

There are a few other very important irregular verbs to note:

  être (“to be”) avoir (“to have”) aller (“to go”) faire (“to make”)
je suis j’ai vais fais
tu es as vas fais
il/elle/on finit est a va fait
Nous sommes avons allons faisons
Vous êtes avez allez faitez
Ils/elles sont ont vont font

Faire, specifically

Faire gets its own section because it’s a special little verb that gets used with a lot of other words to turn into activities you can do:

Aller, specifically: Le Futur Proche

This is a special tense formed with the verb “aller” which describes something that is about to happen or something that will happen soon. Construction of the futur proche is pretty simple: conjugate aller in the present tense as normal, and then put another verb’s infinitive form right after it. For example:

Articles

Articles are used to modify or indicate nouns. Examples of articles in english are “a/an”, “the”, “some”, etc. There are several kinds of articles in French, much the same as in English.

Definite articles

This is the simplest category of articles in French. They correspond to the definite article “the” in english, but are modified based on count and gender.

Remember that if a noun starts with a vowel, the article shortened to “l’” and appeneded onto the noun (as in “l’acteur”).

indefinite articles

Indefinite articles don’t point to a single, defined noun. They refer instead to an item in general or in concept (i.e. the chair vs. a chair or some chairs). Again, French takes into account gender, which English does not:

Partitive Articles

Partitive articles refer to nouns that either cannot be counted, or when a quantity isn’t specified (i.e. “some water” or “any chair”).

Pronouns

Disjunctive Pronouns

Disjunctives are used to refer to people—recall Mme. Stanley’s example of “don’t drop I/me.” In this case, a disjunctive pronoun, “me,” is used to refer to the speaker in the first person singular rather than the personal pronoun “I”. The same pronouns exist in French.

Weather

Expressions related to weather and the seasons are below:

Questions

There are four primary ways to form a question in French, but really only two of them are relevant. One is to append the phrase “Est-ce que/qu’” to a sentence. The other is to use inversion by switching the order of the subject pronoun (il/elle/etc.) and the verb and placing a hyphen between them, or if connecting a verb that ends in a vowel with a pronoun that begins with a vowel, adding “-t-“ in between them.

Example: “Mange-t-il à midi?” = “Does he eat at noon?”

If your subject is a noun rather than a pronoun, place it at the start of the sentence and then use inversion as normal, as in: “Robert mange-t-il à midi?” = “Does Robert eat at noon?”

A very important phrase to know the inversion form of is “il y a,” which means “there is”. The inversion form is “y a-t-il.” Similarly, the phrase “est-ce” is actually the inverted form of “c’est.”

Other important question words and phrases to know:

Adjectives

There are a butt ton of adjectives and it’s kind of unreasonable to learn all of them, but they’re all here just in case. Study at your own discretion.

Regular Descriptive Adjectives

Irregular Descriptive Adjectives:

Some adjectives are highly irregular. They’ve still got a bit of a pattern to them, though, if that’s any consolation!

Masc. sing. fem. sing. masc. pl. fem. pl. definition
beau belle beaux belles beautiful; handsome
bon bonne bons bonnes good; kind
fier fière fiers fières proud
heureux heureuse heureux heureuses happy
intellectuel intellectuelle intellectuels intellectuelles intellectual
long longue longs longues long
naïf naïve naïfs naïves naive
roux rousse roux rousses red-haired
vieux vielle vieux vielles old

BRAGS

Some adjectives are called BRAGS adjectives. These are adjectives that describe someone or something’s beauty, rank, age, goodness, or size. They will always come before a noun rather than after, as most other adjectives do. Below are some BRAGS adjectives:

Negation

This is one of those concepts in French that shouldn’t be nearly as confusing as it is, but it does get a lot easier once you’ve done it a bunch.

Negation in French is expressed with the phrase “ne … pas” surrounding a verb, or “n’… pas” attached to a verb that starts with a vowel. For example:

Some other somewhat important words that have to do with negation:

Culture

This is the most hopeless of the sections so I’ve relegated it to its own little place on the bottom of the page where I hopefully never have to look at it in despair. We’ve been told one specific piece of trivia that we’ll have to know for the final, so I’m going to put that here:

Zinédine Zidane (Zizou)

Zizou is a french football player. He’s from Marseille, and was named three times the player of the year by FIFA. During his career, he played for several different french teams, and also played for an Italian team and for Real Madrid, in Spain.

Food

This section is a bit of culture and a lot of vocab.

à/è/ì/ò/ù â/ê/î/ô/û é ï ç