Pas grand-chose is one of the most common phrases in everyday French. It turns up in casual conversation, in answers to simple questions, and in complaints about weather, food, work and just about everything else. Despite its frequency, the phrase hides an odd bit of grammar: the word grand stays masculine even though it sits…
Qu’avez-vous comme vin rouge? is a everyday French question meaning “What red wine do you have?” It belongs to a wider pattern, qu’avez-vous comme…? or qu’est-ce que vous avez comme…?, both meaning “what do you have in the way of…?” or, more naturally, “what do you have for…?” or simply “what…do you have?” This pattern…
Chez comes from the Latin word for house, casa, so chez moi translates literally as something like “at the house of me”. In practice, it simply means “at my place”. The same word extends well beyond housing, though, and can point to a person’s country, their body, their character, their profession, their culture or even…
A small group of French verbs ending in -oir can also stand alone as masculine nouns, usually preceded by le or l’. This happens because French allows an infinitive to be treated as a thing in its own right, much like English sometimes turns “to know” into “the knowing” in older or more formal writing….
As with adjectives ending in -ible, many French and English adjectives ending in -able are spelt the same way and carry the same meaning. Probable is “probable”, capable is “capable”, and durable is “durable”. Both languages took this ending from the Latin -abilis, added to a verb to describe something that can be done to…
Unlike most pairs of French and English words, adjectives ending in -ible often look identical, or nearly identical, in both languages. Possible is “possible”, terrible is “terrible”, and visible is “visible”. Both languages took this ending from the same source, the Latin ending -ibilis, added to a verb to describe something that can be done…
Many English adjectives and nouns ending in “-ary” have a close match in French, with the ending -aire instead. “Necessary” becomes nécessaire, “ordinary” becomes ordinaire, and “military” becomes militaire. As with other pairs of this kind, both endings come from the same source, the Latin ending -arius, -aria or -arium, rather than French borrowing directly…
A large number of French adjectives ending in -ique line up neatly with English adjectives ending in “-ical”. Électrique matches “electrical”, pratique matches “practical”, and politique matches “political”. The match is so regular that a learner can often guess the French word for an English “-ical” adjective simply by dropping the “-al” and adjusting the…
Faute de is a French prepositional phrase meaning “for lack of,” “for want of,” or “in the absence of.” It comes from the noun faute, meaning “fault” or “lack,” combined with the preposition de. The phrase points to something missing and shows how that absence leads to a result. Basic meaning Faute de introduces the…
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….
