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How to learn the French language!

Off topic
Everybody knows the iconic "En passant" in chess, I will explain its meaning and more in this blog!

Hello and Welcome!

Everybody knows some common french words like bonjour, baguette, déjà vu etc. Have you ever wondered how these sayings became so popular? How much weirder is French compared to English? If you know Loic Suberville, you might know the answer. If you know Wassim Berbar, you will know the answer right now!

The Alphabet & Diacritics of French (yeah, dia-critics):

It's the same as in English, except one of the most confusing things in French: accents and the cedilla. Yes, "é", "è", "ê" and "ë" make different sounds! The diacritics apply in the french language only on a, e, i, o, u and c. I will talk about this later.

The conventional spelling system of the French language:

In English, we don't mention the "gender" of the noun when we say it; for example if you say "an axe", you don't know the gender of the noun. but in French, the articles mention the gender and number of the noun. like "une hache" is feminine singular, "un outil" is masculine singular. Here's the table for the articles:

MasculineFemininePluralSingular noun starting with vowel or silent "h"
UnknownununedesNone
Knownlelalesl'

Yes, for every noun in French, you must choose between masculine or feminine. And for those who don't understand what "know" and "unknown" stand for is that "un chien" is "a dog", and "le chien" is "the dog".

Plurals:


Very easy, you put an "s" at the end of the noun, generally (keep the word "exception" in mind, it will flashback often):

  1. If the noun ends with "s", "x" or "z", then the plural is the same as the singular ("un nez" in plural is "des nez", it's the same).
  2. If the noun ends with "eau" then its plural is made by adding "x" at the end ("l'oiseau" will become "les oiseaux". Even "une eau" gets her plural by adding "x" as in "eaux").
  3. If the noun ends with "ail" then its plural is made by adding "s" as in general cases, except with the nouns "bail", "corail", "émail", "gemmail", "soupirail", "travail", "vantail" and "vitrail" which make their plural by replacing "ail" with "aux" as in "travaux".
  4. If the noun ends with "al", it's the exact opposite; the normal case is by replacing "al" with "aux" except for "bal", "carnaval", "chacal", "festival", "récital", "régal" and "cal" which make their plurals by adding "s" at the end.

Adjectives:


The feminine of adjectives:

As easy as the previous heading, you add "e" at the end of the adjective, in most cases:

  1. If the adjective already ends with "e", then the feminine doesn't change (as in "un enseignement simple" becomes "une leçon simple").
  2. If the adjective ends with "eux", we replace the "eux" by "euse" (as in "heureux" becomes "heureuse").
  3. If the adjective ends with any of these: "as", "is", "os", "en", "on", "et", "ot","el", "il", "eil" and "ul", we double the last consonant and add "e" after that (as in "bon" becomes "bonne". Special mention to the noun "chiot" which means "puppy" which gets its feminine like "chiotte", I guess I don't need to translate this word for you...) except sometimes for adjectives ending with "et", it is replaced with "ète" as in "complet" becomes "complète".
  4. If the adjective ends with "f", we replace it with "ve" as in English ("neuf" becomes "neuve").
  5. If the adjective ends with "eur", it is replaced by "euse" (as in "danceur" becomes "danceuse").
  6. If the adjective ends with "teur", it is repaced by "trice" (as in "prestidigitateur" becomes "prestidigitatrice") except for some rare cases as in "menteur" becomes "menteuse" despite the presence of the "t".
  7. Except for these special adjectives which make their feminine like so:

bref -> brève
grec -> grecque
sec -> sèche
blanc -> blanche
franc -> franche
roux -> rousse
faux -> fausse
doux -> douce
enchanteur -> enchanteresse
nouveau -> nouvelle -> nouvel
beau -> belle -> bel
vieux -> vieille - vieil
fou -> folle -> fol
mou -> molle -> mol

And also, for the last five adjectives, if one of those precedes a noun beginning with a vowel or silent "h", we use the third form of the adjective ("un bel homme", "un nouvel an").

How do verbs work?

Very simple answer: It's very complicated. And for this reason, we will only focus on infinitive, present simple, imperfect and future simple ,they're the easiest ones and the must-know ones. But before that, I need to talk about the groups of verbs:

Wassim, what is this again?

You know, the verbs in French are divided in three categories:

  1. First group: They're nearly all the verbs that make their infinitive with "er", like "dancer", "fracasser", "merder". Except for the verb "Aller" which is NOT in the first group but in the third group.
  2. Second group: They're almost all the verbs that make their infinitive with "ir", like "finir", "engloutir", "périr". Except for some trash french language inventers have put as third-group verbs despite ending their infinitive with "ir", like "partir", "courir", "bouillir". I will tell you how to make the difference between both later.
  3. Third group: This group is for every other verb is the french language, from those dead verbs not used anymore nowadays like "ouïr", "gésir" to verbs from other groups transfered here like "partir", "aller", by passing through real-originals, ending their infinitive with "oir", "re", "enir", "frir / vrir"...
  4. Obviously, not one but two exceptions: "être" and "avoir" are the only verbs in French that are complete auxilaries. I will show their conjugations in the next headings.

Infinitive:

It's the default form of the verb, the unconjugated form if you want. If for example you want to say "to begin", which is the default form of the verb (to + infinitive), in french it's written "commencer". the "er" I've put in bold is the marker that shows the verb is in the infinitive form (obviously depending on the group of the verb).

Also, you can use the infinitive form of the verb as a noun. for example the phrase "travailler est la chose la plus épuisante à faire" is like "working is the most tiring thing to do".

And some verbs can use the infinitive of other verbs to be used as a noun, as in "aller travailler est la chose la plus épuisante à faire". Yes, I don't know either what happened to the brains of whom invented this language, it's unintuitive as much as possible and I don't know myself how rotten their tomato-brains were.


Present Simple Tense:

Very obvious for what it is, not so much for learning it. I will just write a table to not tire myself up:

1st Group2nd Group3rd Group (general)ÊtreAvoir
Je (I)-e-is-ssuisai
Tu (singular you)-es-is-sesas
Il/Elle/On (He/She/It)-e-it-testa
Nous (we)-ons-issons-onssommesavons
Vous (plural you)-ez-issez-ezêtesavez
Ils/Elles (they/they)-ent-issent-entsontont

When you want to conjugate a verb you want, you look at the table above and you replace the infinitive termination of the verb ("er", "ir", "re", "irregular ir") with the corresponding termination, except for "être" and "avoir" which I've already put their conjugation. Notice how different the conjugations of both auxilaries are, you must learn them by heart (in school).


Imperfect Tense:

Here it's much much simpler, it's just pure "take off the infinitive and replace by terminations". The Imperfect is used tu talk about long actions in the past, the perfect tense for telling stories:

1st and 3rd Group (all of them)2nd GroupÊtreAvoir
Je-ais-issaisétaisavais
Tu-ais-issaisétaisavais
Il/Elle/On-ait-issaitétaitavait
Nous-ions-issionsétionsavions
Vous-iez-issiezétiezaviez
Ils/Elles-aient-issaientétaientavaient

Future Simple Tense:

As easy as imperfect tense, you literally take the infinitive of the verb and directly add your terminations, like "défenestrer" you simply add the terminations below to it without modifying the infinitive (more often than not):

1st Group2nd Group3rd GroupÊtreAvoir
Je-ai-ai-aiseraiaurai
Tu-as-as-asserasauras
Ils/Elles/On-a-a-aseraaura
Nous-ons-ons-onsseronsaurons
Vous-ez-ez-ezserezaurez
Ils/Elles-ont-ont-ontserontauront

BUT depending on the 3rd group verb, the infinitive should be modified to make pronounciation better. As an example, the 3rd group verb "courir" should be conjugated like "je courirai, tu couriras, il courira etc." but this can disturb pronounciation, so the correct way is "je courrai, tu courras etc." so that pronounciation is better.

Accents:

This might be, really, one of the most confusing things in French. Just tell me after reading this blog in the forum which is harder: French or Arabic. Accents are little spurs you place on top of vowels to modify their pronounciation:

EAIOU
Acute accent / accent aigué
Grave accent / accent graveèà ù
The Little Hatêâîôû
Tréma / Diaeresisë ïö (foreign words)ü (foreign words)

I can't go deeper into accents or else your brain would explode! To show you at what point it could get, I will just talk about the cedilla.

The Cedilla:

The "c" letter is pronounced /s/ if the letter next to it is "e", "i" or "y" and pronounced /k/ if the letter next to it is "a", "o", "u", "l" or "r". But, you can make the "c" be pronounced /s/ after "a", "o" or "u" by adding that cedilla, which would look like this: "ç", like ça is pronounced /sa/ but ca is pronounced /ka/. Funny thing is, "ça" is the french translation of the famous horror movie "it".

The French grammar:

In French, the sentence is made up with a subject, a verb and an object. For example:
-Je gifle une personne.

  • "Je" is the subject, it is the one doing the action of the verb. In this case, it's the personal pronoun "Je", "I".
  • "gifle" is the verb, from the verb "gifler" which means "slap somebody across the face with one's hand".
  • "une" is an article, to precise that the object is singular, feminine and unknown.
  • "personne" is the object, it means a person. But without an article, just "personne" it means "nobody".

But sometimes the verb is intransitive; they don't need an object:
-Tu dors.

  • "Tu" is the subject, thanks C. Obvious.
  • "dors" is the verb, the 3rd group verb "dormir", another one of those 3rd group verbs but with their infinitive "ir". It means "to sleep", and you don't need to sleep something, so it's intransitive.

And for questions, you just put the question word in the beginning and then continue the sentence normally, and then finish with a question mark. Here's a table for the question words

SubjectWhoQui
ObjectWhatQuoi
PlaceWhere
TimeWhenQuand
MannerHowComment
ReasonWhyPourquoi
ChoiceWhichQuel(le)(s) or Lequel(le)(s)
NumberHow many / How muchCombien
Yes/No QuestionInvert subject and verb (are you?)Invert subject and verb (est-tu?) and add a hyphen

The parenthesis il "Quel" and "Lequel" show what's their feminine and plural. And in French Yes/No questions, we add a hyphen between the subject and the verb, and if the verb ends with a vowel sound and the subject begins with a vowel sound, we add that little "t" to make the liaison.

Trivia / fun facts:

  1. The most used letters in French are e, s and a.
  2. The least used letters in French are w, z and k.
  3. The 3rd group verb "asseoir" accepts two different ways of conjugation (je m'asseois, tu t'asseois etc.) or (je m'assieds, tu t'assieds etc.)
  4. The verb "maudire" is surprisingly conjugated nearly exactly like a 2nd group verb, except for its past participle which is "maudit"
  5. The verb "haïr" is considered an "exception" in the 2nd group, as the i has two dots (it's called a "tréma", very strange english translation "diaeresis"), so some of its conjugations demand the i with a tréma.
  6. Some verbs are called "impersonal", and these are verbs that can only be conjugated with "il". Some examples are "pleuvoir", "neiger", "venter" which means "to rain", "to snow" and "to wind".
  7. Some other verbs are called "pronominal", and in their infinitive they have "se", as in "se moucher" which means "to blow one's nose".
  8. The word "personne" means a person, except when it means "nobody".
  9. Most verbs in French are 1st group verbs, and some verbs recently invented are mostly 1st group verbs, like "zapper" which means "change channel in a TV" or "bouffer" which means "eating" but is more informal.
  10. The adjectives "aigu", "exigu", "contigu" make their feminine like this: "aiguë", "éxiguë" and "contiguë" I think, and are written with an e tréma. However, these spellings are also correct: "aigüe", "éxigüe", "contigüe"
  11. With the new orthographical reform in French in 1990, they changed how words were spelled, and modifications were made to words like that. The full Wiki page is right here.
  12. The verbs having their infinitive with "traire", like "distraire" "soustraire" "extraire" and so on, don't have a past simple nor imperfect subjunctive (another nonsense french inventers have invented), don't ask me why.
  13. The "en passant" of chess stands for "by passing", but I still prefer to call it "french move".
  14. In the French language, sometimes you need to test before taste. For example, to see if a verb ending its infinitive with "ir" is from the 2nd or 3rd group, you can try to conjugate it as a 2nd group verb, and if it doesn't sound right, it's a 3rd group verb. For example "courir", I will try to conjugate it as if it was a 2nd group verb "Je couris, tu couris, il courit...". Nah, it doesn't sound like french. So it's a 3rd group verb. I know it sounds dubious, but as any mathematician would say:

The best angle from which you can learn maths is the try-angle.

I'm very sorry, I had to insert this joke somewhere, it sounded funny. Anyways, the best thing to do anyways is just to have a Bescherelle in your pocket everyday and you'll be fine!

Conclusion:

French seems obviously like an overly complicated language, I don't know what fly bite them (another famous but absurd french saying), but it's like that. That's all for this long exceptional introduction to the French language, I hope you enjoyed and if so please like this blog and see ya in a prochain blog!