French Blog

French Grammar - Possessive Adjectives

Chanda — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:30:38 +0000

First of all, here are the answers to the family relationships vocabulary exercise I gave you a few days ago.

1. La mère de ma mère c’est ma grand-mère.

2. Les enfants de mon oncle ce sont mes cousins.

3. La fille de ma mère c’est ma sœur.

4. Le frère de mon père c’est mon oncle.

5. Le père de mon père c’est mon grand-père.

6. Le frère de mon oncle c’est mon père.

7. La sœur de ma mère c’est ma tante.

8. La sœur de ma tante c’est ma mère.

You may have noticed the use of ma, mon, mes in the above sentences. These are called adjectifs possessifs in French and possessive adjectives in English. In all of these examples, I have used the first person possessive adjectives; in other words, the French versions of “my”. Below are some more examples with third person possessive adjectives; in other words, the French versions of “her”, “his” and “their”.

Singulier

C’est

le mari de Amélie.

la sœur de Jean.

le cousin de Marie et de Jean.

la fille de Amélie et d’Antoine.

son mari

sa sœur

leur cousin

leur fille

Plural

Ce sont

les parents de Sophie.

les enfants de Amélie et d’Antoine.

ses parents

leurs enfants

You must make the possessive adjective agree in gender and number with the noun the object belongs to; in other words, depending on whether the noun is singular or plural / masculine or feminine.

Singular

Plural

masculine

feminine

masculine and feminine

1 “owner”

mon

ton

son

mes

tes

ses

Singular

Plural

masculine and feminine

More than 1 “owner”

notre

votre

leur

nos

vos

leurs

Just to be sure you get it, compare these two sentences:

Il avait invité tous ses amis à sa fête. (He invited all of his friends to his party.)
(just one “owner”)
Ils avaient invité tous leurs amis à leur fête. (They invited all of their friends to their party.)
(more than one “owners”)

Careful though as the possessive adjectives ma, ta and sa before words that begin with vowels or a silent h all end in “n” regardless of whether they are masculine or feminine. Examples: mon adresse, ton amie, son identité.

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French Vocabulary in Context IV Answers

Chanda — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 13:42:03 +0000

Here are the answers to the vocabulary activity I posted a few days ago:

admonester : réprimander vivement (to admonish)

sermonner (to lecture)
gronder (to scold)
réprouver (to reprove)

Comment avez-vous fait?

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French Relationships

Chanda — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 16:06:32 +0000

While the title of this French vocabulary article may seem a bit misleading, this exercise on family words may prove to be fun and helpful to your learning process. Fill in the blanks with the appropriate French word, or even better yet, let us know what your answers are in a comment!

1. La mère de ma mère c’est ma _______________.

2. Les enfants de mon oncle ce sont mes ________.

3. La fille de ma mère c’est ma ________________.

4. Le frère de mon père c’est mon ______________.

5. Le père de mon père c’est mon ______________.

6. Le frère de mon oncle c’est mon _____________.

7. La sœur de ma mère c’est ma _______________.

8. La sœur de ma tante c’est ma _______________.

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How to Pronounce French Vowels

Chanda — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 19:41:43 +0000

Perhaps most if not all of our readers will agree that one of the hardest things about learning and dominating the French language is pronunciation!! So, today, I’m going to try to help you out a little bit on this one with some technique talk. This is what you should do to correctly pronounce the vowels:

VOWEL	WHERE IS YOUR TONGUE?	WHAT IS YOUR MOUTH DOING?
[i] as in joli	very far in front	smiley, almost closed
[y] as in salut	very far back	almost closed and rounded
[e] as in étude	in front	a little open
[ε ] as in faire	in front	open
[a] as in la	in front	very open
[ə] as in le	in front	a little open
[œ] as in neuf	in front	open and rounded
[Ø] as in bleu	very far back	a little open and rounded
as in pomme	a little back	open and rounded
[o] as in mot	in back	open and very rounded
[u] as in jour	a little back	a little open and very rounded
as in vin	in front *remember this one is nasal as if you have a cold	open and smiley
as in dans	a little back *remember this one is nasal as if you have a cold	very open and rounded
as in pont	in back *remember this one is nasal as if you have a cold	a little open and really rounded

Practice them in front of a mirror…I know, I know…it’s not that easy! But, the important thing is to have fun when you’re learning and believe me this makes for some laughs!

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French Games - Scattegories II

Chanda — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 18:48:39 +0000

Some time ago, I began a French Scattegories game with this blog and it’s time for another round!! So, put your French vocabulary to the test!

I’ll remind you of the rules:

Règles
Je vous donne dix catégories et une lettre. Vous devez répondre avec un mot qui commence avec cette lettre. Évidement, vous ne devez pas répondre le même que les autres et il faut être créatif. Bonne chance!

Also, please remember that you can’t enter more than one word for each category. Have fun!
Lettre: M

Catégories:
1. l’architecture
2. la nature
3. les voyages
4. les villes
5. la fête
6. le mariage
7. le sport
8. les nombres
9. les langues
10. la musique

I believe emmanuel was the winner of the last round. Let’s see who wins this one…write a comment with your answers.

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French Music - Vanessa Paradis

Chanda — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 10:52:33 +0000

Possibly most famous in the US as Johnny Depp’s long-time love and mother of his two children, Vanessa Paradis was born on December 22, 1972 in a town near Paris where she took piano and dance lessons. Now a successful singer, actress and Chanel model, she became a child star in 1987 at just 14 years of age after the release of her single Joe le taxi, which was #1 on the French charts for 11 weeks and rose to #3 on the UK charts. In 1990, she won the Victoire de la Musique Female Performer of the Year award with her second album, Variations sur le même t’aime. In 1992, she moved to the US to work with Lenny Kravitz, who wrote and produced her English-language album “Vanessa Paradis”, the most successful single from which was entitled “Be My Baby”. Bliss was released in 2000 and Divinidylle in 2007, with which she won several music awards and nominations in France.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBFna8sPpOg

She is rumored to currently be working on a Greatest Hits album.
She filmed her first movie as an actress, Noce blanche, in 1989, for which she received the 1990 César Award for Most Promising Actress despite her later claim that the filming process with the Director was not a good experience for her. In 1994, she worked with Gérard Depardieu in the film Elisa. Perhaps one of her most famous films in the US is the French movie La fille sur le pont (The Girl on the Bridge), released in 1999 in France and in 2000 abroad, and for which she was nominated for another César Award. Her official website is Vanessa Paradis de A à Z.

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French Vocabulary in Context IV

Chanda — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 13:40:50 +0000

Today, I’ll give you another very short vocabulary activity to work on. French teachers can use this exercise as a quick warm-up activity. I will provide the answers in a later post (in a few days) so you have plenty of time to get to it.

I thought of this word this afternoon when I had to get after my 3 year-old daughter. (Hint, hint..)

admonester (verb)

Context: Julie a admonesté son petit chien pour avoir jappé quand quelqu’un a frappé à la porte.

Create three synonyms for admonester?
_ e_ m_ _ _ _ _
_r_ _ _ _ _

r_ _ _ _ _ _ _ r

Write a sentence of your own using the word admonester.

Vous pouvez partager vos phrases avec nous dans un commentaire !

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French Grammar - Adverbs

Chanda — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 13:19:36 +0000

C’est quoi un adverbe? Well, according to my Robert Micro (my all-time favorite dictionary…although not completely sure why), c’est un mot invariable ajoutant une détermination à un verbe (ex : marcher lentement), un adjectif (ex : très agréable), un adverbe (ex : trop rapidement), ou à une phrase entière (ex : évidemment, il ne se presse pas).

In English, we often say that an adverb tells how something is done.

Il se bouge facilement. (He moves easily.)
Il s’est finalement décidé. (He has finally decided.)

In French, many adverbs end in -ment. However, there are some exceptions. The formation rules are as follows:

1. You take the feminine form of the adjective and add -ment.
fort › forte › fortement
doux › douce › doucement
vif › vive › vivement
fou › folle › follement

2. For adjectives that end in -ent and -ant, the suffix is -emment or -amment.
prudent › prudemment
violent › violemment
courant › couramment
suffisant › suffisamment

3. For adjectives that end in -i, -é and -u, the final -e in the feminine form disappears.
vrai › vraiment
absolu › absolument
aisé › aisément

There are also adverb words or adverb word groups like hier, longtemps, tôt, tard, demain, souvent, loin, près, dehors, trop, là-bas, partout, quelque part, quelquefois, jamais, assez, beaucoup, assez, très, vite, par hasard, à peu près, tout à l’heure, au maximum…

Some adjectives can also be used as adverbs in their masculine singular form like bas, fort, cher, froid…

Finally, there are some often-used adverbs that are completely different from their corresponding adjectives:
bon › bien
mauvais › mal
meilleur › mieux
petit › peu

Who can make a sentence with as many adverbs as possible? Please share in a comment.

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French Slang - Argôt Français Contemporain

Chanda — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 20:10:07 +0000

One of our readers asked if I would write an article on slang that young people use. Although I’m not going to say I’m any kind of expert as my teenage days are long over, this article is an attempt to find something for him.
Some young people, especially those in urban neighborhoods speak what is known as langue djeunz (as in langue des jeunes). Some of this slang is also used among families and friends outside the big cities through the spread of hip hop culture and SMS language. Much of modern French slang comes from the influence of foreign words (English, Arabic, etc.). One form of this slang is what is called verlan, which some of my French friends introduced me to when I lived in Paris. Verlan is all about reversing the syllables of a word, but not usually with words with more than three syllables. And it has to sound cool, so sometimes the word is then changed a bit to be pleasing to the ear. The word verlan actually comes from reversing the syllables of l’envers (reverse or back to front).
l’envers → ver
l’envers → lan (although for phonological reasons, the e was changed to an a to make verlan)

Here are some French words in verlan:
femme - meuf (woman)
énervé - vénère (angry)
arabe - beur (Arab)
cigarette - garette-ci (which was later transformed to garo)
bizarre - zarbi (strange)
père - reup (father)

Finally, here’s a really interesting website in French on French slang. There are even fables by Jean de La Fontaine in slang. Le Dictionnaire Argôt Français

Et merci de nouveau Ryan pour ton commentaire!

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Let’s Talk About Verbs - Venir

Chanda — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 18:24:53 +0000

Je viens de mettre mes filles au lit. I have just put my girls in bed.

Venir de conjugated in the present tense and followed by the infinitive is the equivalent of to have just + past participle.

Elle vient d’arriver. (She has just arrived.)
Ils viennent de faire leurs devoirs. (They have just done their homework.)

It is an irregular -ir verb and is conjugated in the present tense like this:

je viens
tu viens
il/elle/on vient
nous venons
vous venez
ils/elles viennent

There are other verbs that are conjugated in the present tense in the same way; in other words, with the same suffixes, and they are: devenir (to become), revenir (to come back), se souvenir de (to remember), tenir (to hold) and obtenir (to obtain).

Why don’t you give us an example sentence using one of these verbs in a comment!

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