In our previous lesson, we discussed the verb dire (to say), which has a few derivatives: médire (to speak ill of), maudire (to curse), redire (to say again), interdire (to forbid, ban), contredire (to contradict), and prédire (to predict). Although these verbs all end in -dire, they don’t necessarily follow the same conjugation patterns as dire (to say). Let’s explore the various meanings and characteristics of these verbs.  

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Redire (to say again) is the only verb that is conjugated in the exact same way as dire (to say). In other words, it is also irregular in the second-person plural in the present tense of the indicative. So, just as we say vous dites (you say), we say vous redites (you say again). Here is an example of this verb in the infinitive:

Maintenant tu vas me redire quelle couleur c'est.

Now you're going to tell me again what color this is.

Caption 33, Lionel et Automne Lionel retourne à l'école

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If Lionel had used the formal vous (you), this is what the sentence would look like:

Maintenant vous me redites quelle couleur c'est.

Now you tell me again what color this is.

Interestingly, redire doesn’t just mean “to say again.” When used in the idiomatic expression n’avoir rien trouver à redire, redire implies some kind of criticism: “to have nothing bad to say."

La direction de Vélo'v n'a trouvé rien à redire sur ces selles multicolores.

Vélo'v's management has found nothing bad to say about these multicolored seats.

Caption 19, Télé Lyon Métropole Street art: le yarn bombing, c'est quoi?

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Speaking of having bad things to say, we have the verb maudire, which means “to put a curse on somebody,” something that happens a lot in fairy tales:

Elle l'avait maudit aussi longtemps qu'une princesse ne l'aurait autorisé à manger dans son assiette et à dormir dans son lit pendant trois nuits.

She had cursed him for as long as a princess wouldn't allow him to eat off her plate and to sleep in her bed for three nights.

Captions 33-34, Contes de fées Le roi grenouille - Part 2

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Also worth noting is the fact that maudire (to put a curse on somebody) is the only derivative that belongs to the second-group (-ir) verbs, as it models its conjugation on finir (to finish) with the plural endings -issons, -issez, -issent in the present tense: 

Les contes de fées finissent souvent mal quand les sorcières maudissent les princesses.

Fairy tales often end badly when witches put a curse on princesses.

In addition, when placed before a noun, the past participle maudit/maudite works as an adjective, often translating as “damned” in English:

En fait, c'est la faute de cette maudite molaire

Actually, it's the fault of this damned molar

Caption 53, Les zooriginaux La rage de Croqueur - Part 4

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A milder variation of maudire (to put a curse on someone) is médire (to speak ill of someone or to slander). Unlike maudire, médire is conjugated like dire, as in ils disent/ils médisent (they say/they speak ill of), except in the second-person plural. In this case, médire keeps the regular form, vous médisez (you speak ill of)—not "vous médites." Here is a quote from the book Histoire de Marie-Antoinette by Edmont and Jules de Goncourt:

Malin avec le sourire, impitoyable avec l'ironie, il médisait avec le silence.

Clever with a smile, merciless with irony, he slandered with silence.

Moving on to other derivatives, we have interdire (to forbid), contredire (to contradict), and prédire (to predict), which all conjugate like médire (to speak ill of). Let’s start with interdire (to forbid), something that Barbara has trouble understanding in the video below. She is in big trouble for dyeing her hair blond:

Je t'avais interdit de te teindre en blonde.

I had forbidden you to dye your hair blond.

Caption 93, Mère & Fille Tout en couleur

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Interdire often comes in the impersonal phrase il est interdit de (it is forbidden to) + verb:

Aujourd'hui il est interdit de se regrouper.

Today it's forbidden to gather in groups.

Caption 8, Lionel L La pandémie

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You may also come across contredire (to contradict):

Oui. -Monsieur qui est breton ne va pas me contredire. -Hé, c'est pas gagné!

Yes. -The gentleman from Brittany isn't going to contradict me. -Hey, that's not certain!

Caption 63, LCM Recette: Crêpes

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Finally, we have the verb prédire (to predict), which comes up frequently in the world of horoscopes:

Résultat: si un horoscope prédit trois choses...

The result: if a horoscope predicts three things...

Caption 136, Le Monde L’astrologie fonctionne-t-elle ?

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In conclusion, here is a summary of how each of these verbs is conjugated in the vous form:

interdire: vous interdisez (you forbid)
prédire: vous prédisez (you predict)
médire: vous médisez (you speak ill of)

contredire: vous contredisez (you contradict)

redire: vous redites (you say again)

maudire: vous maudissez (you curse)

That's about all that dire and its derivatives have to say. Thank you for reading!

French verbs tend to be trickier to conjugate than English verbs, and dire (to say) is no exception. For the most part, though, the verb dire presents few difficulties as it doesn’t have many irregularities. And yet, it has a few grammatical quirks worth highlighting, not to mention that this common verb comes with a multitude of interesting expressions in various tenses. So, let’s dissect dire and see what it has to say!

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First, let’s look at this verb in its most basic form, the infinitive (dire), which is used in a variety of idiomatic expressions, as in vouloir dire (“to mean," literally "to want to say"):

L'expression "c'est du pipeau" veut dire c'est pas sérieux.

The expression "it's a pipe" means it's not serious.

Captions 12-13, Le saviez-vous? Les expressions inspirées de la musique - Part 3

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Besides "to say," dire can sometimes mean “to think,” but in a negative kind of a way, as in to be unable to "think" or "bear the idea" of something:

Et dire qu'il s'était servi de Nino aussi.

And to think that he'd used Nino as well.

Caption 19, Le Jour où tout a basculé J'ai volé pour nourrir mon fils - Part 9

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Now let’s take a look at dire in the present indicative tense. No big surprises here, but watch out for this one important irregular form, vous dites (you say/you are saying), NOT “vous disez”:

Encore une fois, c'est n'importe quoi ce que vous dites, maître.

Once again, what you're saying is nonsense, sir.

Caption 1, Le Jour où tout a basculé À l'audience - Volé par sa belle-mère ? - Part 8

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Also, don’t be tempted to add a circumflex accent to vous dites, as French speakers sometimes mistakenly do. If you add an accent, you will end up with the passé simple or past historic tense, vous dîtes (you said). Fortunately, this tense is rarely used. Here is an instance of it in an article about COVID tests:

Comme vous le dîtes, plus de 700 000 tests étaient réalisés quotidiennement la semaine dernière, augmentant les détections.

As you said, over 700,000 tests were carried out daily last week, thus increasing detections. 

And don't forget the s in (vous) dites—otherwise you'll have dite, which is the feminine singular past participle of dire (the masculine singular is dit, "said"). In the example below, the singular feminine direct object la raison is placed before the verb, which means the past participle must also be feminine singular:

Mais oui, pour la raison que je vous ai dite.

But yes, for the reason that I told you about.

Caption 76, Le Jour où tout a basculé À l'audience: Mon chirurgien était ivre - Part 2

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Incidentally, dites is also the plural feminine past participle of dire. So if the speaker in the above example were referring to multiple "reasons," the sentence would be:

Mais oui, pour les raisons que je vous ai dites.

But yes, for the reasons that I told you about.

(To learn more about agreement rules for past participles, see our lesson on the subject.)

You may also come across dit/dits/dite/dites in front of a noun or adjective, in which case it means “known” or “so-called”:

C'est la maison Maurice Ravel dite "le Belvédère" de son vrai nom.

It's the Maurice Ravel House, known by its real name "Le Belvédère."

Caption 9, Voyage en France Montfort-l'Amaury - Part 1

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Mais il existe aussi une autre astrologie, l'astrologie dite savante

But there's also another astrology, so-called scholarly astrology

Captions 13-14, Le Monde L’astrologie fonctionne-t-elle ?

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“So-called” in the sense of being inappropriately named is soit-disant in French, injecting some skepticism into the sentence. In the video below, Sophie and Patrice discuss politics and are skeptical about the soit-disant centrist politicians:

Christiane Taubira, Anne Hidalgo. Et puis, dans une zone un peu indéfinie, soi-disant le centre

Christiane Taubira, Anne Hidalgo. And then, in a somewhat undefined zone, the so-called center

Captions 8-10, Sophie et Patrice Les élections présidentielles

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Soi-disant can also mean "supposedly":

Soi-disant qu'à la télé, ils ont dit: pacte pour l'emploi.

Supposedly on TV they said "employment pact."

Caption 52, Le Monde Comment la Marche des Beurs a révélé la crise des banlieues - Part 1

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Finally, in the conditional tense, we have the impersonal expression on dirait ("it looks like," literally "one would say") that you can use anytime you have an impression about something or someone. This handy phrase has a multitude of meanings that you can explore in this lesson. In the video below, Marie gives the impression of being a real artist and gets a compliment from Sandra, her art teacher:

Mais on dirait une vraie artiste.

But you look like a real artist.

Caption 2, Marie et Sandra Atelier d'art - Part 17

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In conclusion, dire means a lot more than "to say”! Feel free to explore the many forms and ways of using dire in our Yabla videos. And stay tuned for another lesson on dire and its “cousins” (derivatives). Thank you for reading!

The conjunction or pops up in two of our new videos this week:

Or la gravité est présente partout.

But gravity is present everywhere.

Caption 79, Le Monde - L’astrologie fonctionne-t-elle ?

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Or, je n'étais pas de garde et surtout j'étais saoul.

But, I wasn't on call and above all I was drunk.

Captions 85-86, Le Jour où tout a basculé - À l'audience: Mon chirurgien était ivre

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Or is not a particularly common conjunction, but it's a good one to know nonetheless (just don't confuse it with the English "or," which is ou in French). It's a synonym of mais (but, yet) and related words like cependant, néanmoins, pourtant, toutefois (however, nevertheless):

Or, il y en a un quatrièmeque nous décrit ici en détail un grand voyageur qui se nomme Amerigo Vespucci.

However, there's a fourth one that a great explorer named Amerigo Vespucci describes to us here in detail.

Captions 34-35, Il était une fois - les Explorateurs 10. Amerigo Vespucci - Part 7

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You'll also see or used as a more general conjunction, equivalent to "now" or "well," often to introduce a new or oppositional fact:

Cette pièce a été remplacée ensuite par celle-ci

This coin was replaced later by this one

au début vingtième siècle.

in the early twentieth century.

Or c'est à peu près la même, mais modernisée pour l'époque.

Now, it's more or less the same, but modernized for the era.

Captions 16-18, Georges - Breizh Numismat

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Je croyais qu'il allait me demander en mariage ce soir-là. Or, il ne l'a pas fait.
I thought he was going to ask me to marry him that night. Well, he didn't do it.

As you can see here, or always comes at the beginning of a sentence or clause when used as a conjunction. You could even call it a "transition word." But or isn't only a conjunction! It also happens to be the word for "gold":

Il doit y avoir une mine d'or.

There must be a gold mine here.

Caption 39, Il était une fois - les Explorateurs 10. Amerigo Vespucci - Part 3

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L'or is both the color gold and the element. Its adjective form is doré(e):

Il m'a donné une bague de fiançailles dorée.
He gave me a gold engagement ring.

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Thanks for reading! Stay tuned for our next lesson and tweet us @yabla or send your topic suggestions to newsletter@yabla.com.