English speakers learning French often confuse à l’heure and à temps. Both relate to time, but they serve distinct purposes. This article explains their meanings, gives many examples, and lists synonyms. Core meanings À l’heure literally translates as “at the hour.” Figuratively, it means “on time” or “punctual.” It refers to a fixed point on…
Quoi d’autre is a short question used constantly in spoken French, meaning “What else?” It appears in shops, in offices, in casual chats and in written French too. This article looks at what the phrase means, why it is built the way it is, and how it is used. Meaning Literally, quoi d’autre translates as…
Attendre means “to wait” or “to wait for”. When it is followed by que and a second verb, that second verb must go into the subjunctive mood, because the event being waited for has not happened yet and is not certain from the speaker’s point of view. This is the same logic behind other French…
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’est-ce que vous avez comme vin rouge ? is a common French way of asking “What red wine do you have?” It is part of the wider pattern qu’avez-vous comme… ? or qu’est-ce que vous avez comme… ?, meaning “What do you have?” within a particular category. This pattern is common in restaurants, shops, markets…
Chez comes from the Latin word for “house”, casa. So chez moi literally means something like “at the house of me”, but in practice it simply means “at my place”. However, chez is not limited to someone’s home. Depending on what follows it, it can also refer to a person’s country, body, character, profession, culture…
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…
A small group of French verbs ending in -oir can also be used as masculine nouns, usually with le or l’. These nouns come from the infinitive forms of the verbs. This use of the infinitive became standard with a handful of verbs, giving us nouns such as le pouvoir, le savoir, l’avoir, le devoir…
Many French and English adjectives ending in -able are spelt the same way and have the same meaning. Probable means “probable”, capable means “capable”, and durable means “durable”. Both languages inherited this ending from Latin -abilis. In most cases, the English word came from French. The differences between French and English are usually quite small:…
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…
