Laisser and lasser are two regular French verbs that look and sound almost identical, but they mean completely different things. Laisser means “to let,” “to leave,” or “to allow.” Lasser means “to tire” or “to weary.” The only difference in spelling is a single letter, which is why French learners often confuse them in writing….
Se tenir is one of the most flexible reflexive verbs in French. It comes from tenir (“to hold”), and adding the reflexive pronoun opens up a wide range of meanings, from physical posture to behaviour, to whether an argument makes sense. Because it covers so much ground, it is worth learning through its main categories…
The French adjective dernier means “last.” Its place in the noun phrase often tells you whether it means a past time period or the final item in a group. It changes form to match the noun: dernier (masculine singular), dernière (feminine singular), derniers (masculine plural), and dernières (feminine plural). In the masculine singular and masculine…
Huit jours and quinze jours are French time phrases meaning “a week” and “a fortnight” respectively. Literally they translate as “eight days” and “fifteen days,” but in practice they refer to seven and fourteen days. The mismatch is a long-standing feature of the language, with roots in Roman methods of counting and in legal and…
French has two common verbs for “to mean”: vouloir dire and signifier. Both get used every day, but they don’t always work the same way. Vouloir dire is the everyday choice, used in speech and in writing alike. Signifier leans more formal and shows up more in writing, in academic talk, and when discussing signs,…
The French verb aimer can mean both “to like” and “to love.” Its meaning depends on the person or thing that follows it, the article used with it, and the wider context. French also has several other ways to express fondness, strong interest, preference, attraction, and love. Aimer with people When aimer is used with…
Contre is a small French word with a wide reach. Its core meaning is “against,” but depending on the sentence it can also translate as “for,” “to,” or “however.” It works mainly as a preposition, though it also appears as an adverb and as a noun. Part of speech Contre can function in three ways:…
Here are the 19 most frequently used irregular verbs in French. Since these 19 verbs are irregular, the way they are conjugated doesn’t follow the rules of regular verbs. (Conjugation: using the appropriate spellings of the verb to match I, you, he/she/it/one/etc, we, you and they). If you’re wondering why such frequently used verbs are…
Many French expressions ending in que are followed by the subjunctive. These include expressions of condition, purpose, doubt, necessity, emotion, concession and events that have not yet happened. Other expressions ending in que take the indicative instead. The word que itself does not determine the mood. Expressions that take the subjunctive Here is an alphabetised…
Many French words end in the letters “-er,” yet this ending is not pronounced the same way every time. In most cases it sounds like “ay,” as in parler – “to speak.” In a smaller group of words, the final r is actually pronounced, giving a sound closer to “air,” as in hier – “yesterday.”…
