French verbs take on many endings, which can be a challenge to a new learner. Not to mention that some irregular verbs bear little resemblance to their original infinitive forms when conjugated. And a small group of verbs have unique characteristics that may surprise you. So let’s take a tour of these weird and wonderful things called verbs.
Did you know that the shortest conjugated verb in French is only one letter long, a, as in il/elle a (he/she has)?
Et il a des révélations à lui faire.
And he has some revelations to make to him.
Caption 2, Le Jour où tout a basculé À la recherche de mon père - Part 9
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Speaking of short verbs, a few irregular past participles ending in -u are extremely short and depart from their infinitive forms. And to make matters worse, they look very similar. The past participles of savoir, croire, pouvoir, boire, voir, and devoir are su, cru, pu, bu, vu, and dû (known, believed, was able to, drank, must have):
Ce que j'ai pu constater...
What I was able to observe...
Caption 23, Alphabétisation des filles au Sénégal
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Just a quick reminder that past participles sometimes have to agree in gender and number with their objects, which means they take on additional endings. In the following example, vu becomes vus to agree with the masculine plural object, les gens:
...et les gens qu'elles avaient vus là-bas.
...and the people they had seen there.
Caption 21, Contes de fées La petite sirène - Part 1
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Verbs ending in -ut or -it, as in fut (was) and fit (did), are often the mark of the passé simple or past historic, which is a tense used in fairy tales and other literary or historical works:
La première chose qu'elle vit fut un grand bateau.
The first thing she saw was a large boat.
Caption 25, Contes de fées La petite sirène - Part 1
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Although the past historic is little used, you may come across it from time to time, so it is worth familiarizing yourself with its endings at least. Be aware, though, that some verbs in the past historic look the same as other verbs in the present tense. For example, elle vit (she saw) is a past historic form of voir, but elle vit (she lives) is also a present tense form of vivre:
Mais heureusement ton frère, bon, qui vit à Montréal...
But luckily your brother, well, who lives in Montreal...
Caption 36, Elisa et sa maman La technologie
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And sometimes, a verb conjugated in the same tense can have two different meanings, as in je suis (I am/I follow), which is the first-person singular present of both être (to be) and suivre (to follow). Usually, context is enough to guide you, but it could also be a trick question in an exam! In the video below, the poor koala is having an identity crisis:
Quoi? Je ne suis pas un koala? Mais alors, qui suis-je?
What? I'm not a koala? But then, who am I?
Caption 8, Les zooriginaux 3 Qui suis-je? - Part 1
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And here, you have both meanings of suis within the same caption:
Je suis bien d'accord, ils ne servent à rien. Allez, suis-moi.
I totally agree, they are of no use. Come on, follow me.
Caption 14, Les zooriginaux 2 Tel père tel fils - Part 4
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Speaking of present-tense tricks, the verbs vaincre (to defeat, vanquish) and convaincre (to convince) are the only verbs in the French language that have endings in -c and -cs: je convaincs (I convince), tu convaincs (you convince), il convainc (he convinces). This little nugget of knowledge might come in handy while playing Scrabble, but not so much in conversation.
The past participles of vaincre and convaincre are more straightforward: vaincu, convaincu:
Alors, te voici convaincu? Ne cherche pas ailleurs!
So, are you convinced? Don't look elsewhere!
Caption 10, Il était une fois: L’Espace 3. La planète verte - Part 4
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One verb that draws attention to itself not for its unique present-tense ending but for its unusual infinitive form is the verb se fiche (to not give a damn). Normally it should come with an -r at the end, like all infinitives, but many grammarians, including those at Larousse, make a case for se fiche as the infinitive. In any event, it makes for a vigorous debate among scholars and grammarians. As for most people, ils s’en fichent (they could care less) and use the more regular infinitive version, se ficher.
Se fiche is most often a conjugated form of the present tense. In the following example, it takes on a different meaning: "kid" or "get a rise out of":
On se fiche de nous ou quoi?
Are you kidding us or what?
Caption 5, Actus Quartier Devant la SNCF
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Finally, some verb tenses have very exotic endings, even to the average French speaker! Endings such as -inssent, -assent, and -ussent, as in qu’ils vinssent/fassent/fussent (that they came/did/were) belong to the imperfect subjunctive, a tense that's hardly ever used. Most French speakers use the present subjunctive even when referring to the past:
Je voulais que tu viennes.
I wanted you to come.
Very few would use the imperfect subjunctive, unless perhaps for a humorous effect:
Je voulais que tu vinsses.
I wanted you to come.
While the imperfect subjunctive is a literary verb form, the present subjunctive is not, and is often used in casual conversation. For example, you will need the present subjunctive to say something as simple as “I’ve got to go":
Merci de m'avoir regardée sur Yabla. Maintenant faut que j'y aille.
Thanks for watching me on Yabla. I gotta go now.
Caption 39, B-Girl Frak Limoges
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Vaille que vaille (come what may), don’t hesitate to explore more wondrous verb oddities in your Yabla wanderings by taking full advantage of our videos and lessons. Thank you for reading. Maintenant il faut que nous y allions! Au revoir!
In her video on the famous French writer Victor Hugo, Patricia recites an excerpt from Hugo's poem "À l'Arc de Triomphe," a tribute to the city of Paris. The title of the poem means "At the Arc de Triomphe," but in another context à l'Arc de Triomphe could also mean "to the Arc de Triomphe." "At" and "to" are the most common meanings of the preposition à. But as we see several times in this video, à can also mean "from" when paired with certain verbs:
Cette science universelle
This universal science
Qu'il emprunte à tous les humains;
That it borrows from all humans;
Captions 46-47, Le saviez-vous? - La poésie de Victor Hugo
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Puis il rejette aux peuples blêmes
Then it rejects from pallid people
Leurs sceptres et leurs diadèmes,
Their scepters and their diadems,
Captions 48-49, Le saviez-vous? - La poésie de Victor Hugo
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À tout peuple, heureux, brave ou sage,
From all people, happy, brave, or wise,
Il prend ses lois, ses dieux, ses mœurs.
It takes their laws, their gods, their customs.
Captions 42-43, Le saviez-vous? - La poésie de Victor Hugo
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The verbal phrases here are emprunter quelque chose à quelqu'un (to borrow something from someone), prendre quelque chose à quelqu'un (to take something from someone), and rejeter quelque chose à quelqu'un (to reject something from someone). Though de is the more general equivalent of "from," you can't use de in verbal phrases like these–you have to use à.
The indirect object of these phrases (that is, what follows the à) is usually a person: "to x something from (à) someone."
Cacher (to hide) and voler (to steal) are two other common verbs that take à instead of de:
Je vais cacher les cadeaux de Noël à mes enfants.
I'm going to hide the Christmas gifts from my kids.
Marc a volé de l'argent à Sophie.
Marc stole money from Sophie.
Another very common verb with à is acheter (to buy). Be careful with this one though: acheter quelque chose à quelqu'un can either mean "to buy something from somebody" or "to buy something for somebody." You'll need to figure out the meaning from context:
Marc a acheté une bague au bijoutier.
Marc bought a ring from the jeweler.
Marc a acheté une bague à Sophie.
Marc bought a ring for Sophie.
But with other verbs—such as permettre à (to enable/allow), rappeler à (to remind), and coûter à (to cost)—the à doesn't translate to anything at all:
De permettre à quarante mille femmes et jeunes filles au Sénégal,
To enable forty thousand women and young girls in Senegal,
euh... d'être alphabétisées.
uh... to become literate.
Captions 3-4, Alphabétisation - des filles au Sénégal
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Rappeler effectivement aux gens que ça reste des produits de confiserie, c'est pas une mauvaise mesure.
Indeed, to remind people that these are still sweets, it's not a bad idea.
Caption 14, Le Journal - Publicité anti-calories
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Et la différence, cela ne coûte quasiment rien à Martine.
And the difference costs Martine practically nothing.
Caption 57, Alsace 20 - Alsace: les plus belles déco de Noël!
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There are a good number of other verb phrases with à where the à means "from" or just isn't translated. Here are some of the more common ones:
arracher à (to remove from)
commander à (to order)
défendre à (to forbid/ban)
demander à (to ask)
enlever à (to take away from)
épargner à (to spare)
éviter à (to save/spare)
garantir à (to guarantee)
pardonner à (to forgive)
refuser à (to refuse/deny)
souhaiter à (to wish)
In a recent lesson, we talked about the words bon/bonne and mauvais/mauvaise, which respectively mean "good" and "bad," but can also mean "right" and "wrong" depending on context. It's easy to confuse these with the words bien and mal, which have similar meanings ("well" and "badly/poorly") but different functions.
Bon/bonne and mauvais/mauvaise are adjectives, which means they change according to the number and gender of the noun they modify:
Alors justement je crois que c'est vraiment une très bonne chose...
So, exactly, I think that it's really a very good thing...
Caption 56, Alsace 20 - 100 recettes pour 100 vins
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Il y a eu la destruction de la partie de maison existante
There was the destruction of the existing part of the house
qui était en très mauvais état.
that was in very bad shape.
Caption 22, Thomas - Thomas et sa maison
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On the other hand, bien and mal are adverbs, which can modify verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs. Unlike adjectives, these never change in French:
...un grand orfèvre parisien que Balzac connaissait bien.
who was a great Parisian goldsmith whom Balzac knew well.
Caption 28, Exposition - Balzac, architecte d'intérieurs
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Il paraît que les voyages en train finissent mal en général
It seems that train rides generally end badly
Caption 54, Grand Corps Malade - Les Voyages en train
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Just as it's ungrammatical to say "whom Balzac knew good" and "train rides generally end bad" in English, in French you can't say que Balzac connaissait bon or les voyages en train finissent mauvais. You have to use bien/mal.
Bien and mal can also function as nouns. In philosophical terms, they refer to "good" and "evil":
Quelle est la différence entre le bien et le mal?
What is the difference between good and evil?
But they have more down-to-earth meanings as well. For instance, the plural les biens means "goods," as in commodities or possessions. And mal can also refer to illness or harm, as in the expressions avoir mal and faire mal:
J'ai mal à l'oreille.
I have an earache.
Ne me fais pas mal!
Don't hurt me!
In everyday speech, bon and bien are also used as interjections, in which case they're more or less interchangeable. They both correspond to the English interjection "well" in this context:
Eh bien, j'espère que vous avez passé un bon moment, ici, sur Arles.
Well, I hope you had a good time here, in Arles.
Caption 21, Arles - Un Petit Tour d'Arles
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Bon, il y a des raisons personnelles évidemment qui jouent.
Well, obviously there are personal reasons that come into play.
Caption 17, Alphabétisation - des filles au Sénégal
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It's sometimes hard to tell the difference between good and bad, but at least now you know the difference between bon, mauvais, bien, and mal!
Stay tuned for our next lesson and tweet us @yabla or send your topic suggestions to newsletter@yabla.com.
Our latest video asks the question, D'où vient le nom de la France? (Where does France's name come from?) As you'll learn from the video, the name comes from les Francs (the Franks), the Germanic people who settled in the region in ancient times, when it was known as Gaul.
If you ask a French person, D'où viens-tu? (Where are you from?), he or she might say, Je viens de la France (I come from France). But there are two other ways of saying the same thing:
Je suis français(e).
I am French.
Je suis un Français/une Française.
I am a Frenchman/a Frenchwoman.
Here, you can see an important rule that applies to all French demonyms (or words referring to the inhabitants of a place): when used as an adjective (as in the first example), they're written all in lowercase, but when used as a noun (as in the second), their first letter is capitalized.
You can see this distinction played out in this caption from the video:
Les plus anciens ancêtres connus des Français sont des peuples gaulois.
The oldest known ancestors of the French are the Gallic people.
Caption 32, Le saviez-vous? - D'où vient le nom de la France?
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While les Français is a noun, gaulois is an adjective. As an alternative, we could rewrite the sentence by flipping the parts of speech and changing the capitalization accordingly:
Les plus anciens ancêtres connus du peuple français sont les Gaulois.
The oldest known ancestors of the French people are the Gauls.
On a related note, the names of languages in French are always lowercase: whereas le Français means "the Frenchman," le français means "the French language." And whereas demonyms can change gender and number, language names are always masculine and singular. So you can have le Français (the Frenchman), les Français (the Frenchmen/French people), la Française (the Frenchwoman), and les Françaises (the Frenchwomen), but you can only have le français (the French language).
Finally, another way of answering the question d'où viens-tu is with the expression être originaire de (to be originally from/to be a native of). Aïssa Maïga uses this expression in her video on promoting literacy among girls and women in Senegal:
Vu le fait que je sois originaire du Sénégal et aussi du Mali...
Seeing as I am originally from Senegal and also from Mali...
Caption 18, Alphabétisation - des filles au Sénégal
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Aïssa is a French actress with origins in Senegal and Mali, or in other words: Aïssa est une actrice française, originaire du Sénégal et du Mali.
For practice, try describing where you're from in French in a few different ways. You can find a thorough list of French demonyms here.
Chez is one of those few French words with no exact English equivalent. It’s a preposition that can be literally translated as "at the home of" or "at the establishment of," as Alex Terrier uses it when describing his early music influences.
Ensuite j'ai découvert chez mes parents
Then I discovered at my parents' place
des disques trente-trois tours...
some thirty-three rpm records...
Caption 11, Alex Terrier - Le musicien et son jazz
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It can also be used in front of a surname to indicate a family household:
Chez les Marchal, le bac c'est une affaire de famille.
At the Marchals', the bac is a family affair.
Caption 23, Le Journal - Le baccalauréat
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(Note that French surnames don’t take an extra s when pluralized: les Marchal.)
Or it can be used with disjunctive pronouns (moi, toi, soi, etc.) to mean "at my house," "at your house," or even just "at home":
L'hiver, les gens préfèrent rester chez eux...
In the winter, people prefer to stay at home...
Caption 1, Fanny parle des saisons - La Bouffe
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You can also use chez for businesses, offices, restaurants, and other commercial locations:
Je suis pizzaman chez F&F Pizza, un shift par semaine.
I'm a pizza man at F&F Pizza, one shift per week.
Caption 2, F&F Pizza - Chez F&F
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J'ai rendez-vous chez le dentiste et je suis en retard!
I have an appointment at the dentist and I'm late!
Caption 10, Micro-Trottoirs - Art ou science?
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But chez doesn’t only refer to buildings! Quite often, you will also see it used more figuratively. For example, just as "at home" can mean "in one’s house," "in one's country/native land," and just "familiar" in general, chez soi (or chez nous, chez moi, etc.) carries all those meanings as well:
On se sentait absolument chez nous.
We felt right at home.
Caption 23, Les Nubians - Le multiculturalisme
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Finally, when describing something "about" or "in" a person, "among" a group of people, or "in the work of" an author or artist, chez is the word to use:
Je l'ai retrouvée, je l'ai vue chez toutes les femmes, toutes les filles.
I recognized it, I saw it in all the women, all the girls.
Caption 53, Alphabétisation - des filles au Sénégal
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Les pâtes sont très populaires chez les Italiens.
Pasta is very popular among Italians.
Il y a beaucoup de figures bizarres chez Salvador Dalí.
There are many bizarre figures in the work of Salvador Dalí.
We chez Yabla encourage you to speak French as much as you can chez vous!
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