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Verbs - Part 1


Please do not go out of order with the lessons or skip ahead without a lot of practice. Please give it at least one day of study, or you will fall behind or give up quickly.

Now. I'm sure you all know what verbs are, yeah? They are most commonly referred to as 'action words'. They are things that you do, are, have, etc. (in fact all of those are verbs!) And believe it or not, you actually already know a pretty complicated verb (that you won't learn about for a while) already--s'appeller, to call one's self.

As you saw with s'appeler, it changes depending on the subject. When you are saying 'My name is___" the verb is m'appelle, while when you are saying "Your name is___", it is t'appelles. The fact that they change is something called conjugation. Notice that I bolded that. It's important.

In French, you have to conjugate every verb depending on the subject. Luckily, in French, most of the subjects are exactly the same as they are in English--you can use a person's name, a thing, or a subject pronoun:

 

Je I
Tu You (informal)
Il/Elle/On He/She/One*
Nous We
Vous You (formal or plural)**
Ils/Elles They***

*On is the different one. You don't really need to know it well right now, but it is essentially the equivalent of the passive voice in English. Sometimes we use the pronoun 'one' in English, so that's why I put it, but it's fairly rare to see it, right?

**Formality is a big thing in French. We'll cover this in greater depth later, but you will use vous with your teachers, your parents, people older than you, strangers, and groups of people.

***Ils refers to a group that contains at least one male (or masculine object), while Elles is for a group only of females (or feminine objects). Keep note that the 's' is silent in both of these words--they are pronounced exactly the same as their singular counterparts (il/elle).

That seems like a lot, right? Well, it kind of is--but that's all there is. There are only six conjugations for each verb in each tense/mood. To put it in perspective, we do the exact same thing in English, take the verb 'to be':

I Am
You Are
He/She/It Is
We Are
They Are

It changes for each subject, right? Pretty simple when you look at it like that.

In French, the verb for 'to be' is 'être' (and the ^ over the e is important!) This is an irregular verb (like it is in English), so it's different than most verbs, and you will just have to memorize the conjugations for it.

Je suis I am
Tu es You are
Il est He is
Nous sommes We are
Vous êtes You are
Ils sont They are

Unfortunately, the verb 'être' is mostly transitive--that means that it is kind of useless on it's own (just like in English). Think about it--is there really any meaning conveyed when you say, "I am" with no context, right? After être, you will always have an adjective in French, and while we will cover those in more depth later, here are some to help you along with this task:

Intelligent(e)(s) Intelligent
Grand(e)(s) Tall
Petit(e)(s) Small/Short
Idiot(te)(s) Stupid
Heureux / Heureuse Happy
Triste(s) Sad
Beau / Belle Handsome/ Beautiful
Laid(e)(s) Ugly
Intéressant(e)(s) Interesting
Ennuyeux / Ennuyeuse

Boring (or irritating)

Here is the pronunciation guide for the pronouns, verbs, and adjectives for this lesson. Please listen to it.

For this task, please create some sample sentences using each pronoun and conjugation twice. If possible, please get with a partner and practice with each other (meet up in the comments, or if you know each other in real life) orally. If you can't, please practice orally on your own, and if possible record it here so that I can give you feedback.

Task Discussion