French possessive adjectives are used to describe to whom something or someone belongs. Their English equivalents are words like “my,” “your,” “his,” “her,” “its,” “our,” and “their.” They replace articles They are used instead of an article. Articles are words like “un,” “une,” “le,” “la,” “l’” (l + apostrophe), “de,” “du,” “de la,” “de l’” (de…
Reflexive verbs (called “verbes pronominaux” in French) are always conjugated with être in the Passé Composé. Se réveiller Meaning je me suis réveillé I woke up, have woken up tu t’es réveillé you woke up, have woken up il s’est réveillé he woke up, has woken up nous nous sommes réveillés we woke up, have…
“Tout baigne” is a French saying that literally means “everything bathes.” This conjures up visions of a perfect summer beach setting, where some people lay in the sun and others splash about in the water. The meaning of the saying seems to confirm this, because it means “everything is going well, it’s happening for the best,…
In French, you don’t always have to use the Future Simple tense to talk about the future. You don’t even have to use the Near Future tense. You can just use the Present Tense, provided that you also specify a time that will occur sometime in the near future, eg “this evening,” “tomorrow,” or even…
“Cinquième colonne” is a French idiom that means “fifth column.” It translates as “traitor, enemy spy organisation, spy, or secret service for a foreign country.” The idiom dates back to 1936, during the Spanish Civil War. The Nationalists of General Franco announced that the capital of Spain, Madrid, would be attacked by five columns of…
The Past Conditional tense in French expresses the idea that you WOULD HAVE done something, if conditions had been different in the past. In English, it uses either the words “would have” or “‘d” (apostrophe d) + “have.” The past conditional of the English verb “to give” is either “I would have given” or “I’d…
When you want to say that something DIDN’T happen in the past, you will need to make a negative statement in the Passé Composé. This is easy to do. You wrap the “ne…pas” (or other negative term) around the “avoir” or “être” part of the Passé Composé. Verbs conjugated with AVOIR (most verbs) French English…
When “em” and “en” are used as prefixes (meaning at the start of a word) in French, they are always nasal vowels. Prefix Example Phonetics Audio em- emmener ɑ̃mne emmener em- empirer ɑ̃piʀe empirer en- enamourer ɑ̃namuʀe enamourer en- ennuyer ɑ̃nɥije ennuyer But be careful “én” (with an acute accent) is not the same as…
How do you pronounce the letters “im” or “in” when they occur at the start of a word in French? Are they nasal or not? As you can see in the two tables below, the rules are simple. “im” or “in” plus a consonant are nasal. But “imm,” “inn,” “im + vowel,” or “in +…
“Battre la campagne” is a French saying that literally means “to beat the countryside.” What it really means is “to talk nonsense,” “to rant,” or “to travel over large areas in search of something or someone.” It comes from a practice used by hunters of getting servants or friends to use sticks to beat bushes…