If your French is grammatically correct but sounds translated, pouvoir may be part of the problem. English uses “can” for many different purposes, including ability, permission, possibility and requests. French uses several different expressions instead. Using pouvoir whenever you would use “can” can therefore make your French sound unnatural. Here are some common cases and…
À toi de décider means “it’s up to you to decide” or “your call.” It is a common way in French to hand a decision, a task, or a turn over to someone else. The structure is flexible: the pronoun changes depending on who is being addressed or referred to, and the verb changes depending…
France likes to present itself as a champion of linguistic diversity. On paper, secondary school students can choose from a dozen or more foreign languages, plus regional tongues like Breton, Corsican, and Occitan. In practice, though, the numbers tell a much simpler story: a handful of languages dominate, and everything else is a rounding error….
If you’ve ever tried to say something like “despite the fact that he was tired, he kept going” in French, you may have instinctively reached for malgré. It’s the word every textbook gives you for “despite,” so it feels like the obvious choice. But there’s a catch: malgré is a preposition, and prepositions in French…
French words ending in -ix are uncommon. Most nouns ending in -ix are masculine, but some important exceptions are feminine. The ending -ix does not reliably show the gender of a noun, so learners should usually learn each noun together with its article. The ending also appears in some place names, such as Aix-en-Provence and…
Venir and provenir both relate to the idea of coming from somewhere, but they are not interchangeable. Venir is the everyday, general verb for “to come,” used constantly in speech for people, things, and events alike. Provenir is a narrower, more formal verb, used almost exclusively to describe the origin or source of something. The…
French offers two common ways to say “no” or “not any” in front of a noun: pas de and aucun (or aucune for feminine nouns). Both remove or deny something, but they do not carry the same weight. Pas de is the everyday, neutral choice. Aucun/aucune is stronger and more pointed, closer to “not a…
À part is a common French expression used to mean “apart,” “aside,” “except for,” or “separately.” It appears in everyday speech and writing, and its exact sense shifts depending on where it sits in a sentence and what it is paired with. Understanding these different roles helps learners use the phrase correctly and recognise it…
Droit and droite look like the same word with an extra letter, but they cover different ground in French. Droit is mostly a masculine noun and adjective meaning “law,” “a right,” or “straight/upright.” Droite is mostly a feminine noun and adjective meaning “the right side,” “a straight line,” or “the political right.” The two words…
C’est is one of the most common expressions in French. It comes from ce (this, that) plus est (is), and it literally means “it is” or “this is.” English speakers usually reach for “he is” or “she is” when talking about a person, but French often reaches for c’est instead. This is not a mistake…
