Lesson One: Conjugation Basics

 

First of all, you had better know your pronouns, or you’ll really get confused before I even get started. So here they are, just in case:

 

 

Je= I

Tu= You(one person, informal, like a friend or family member you know pretty well)

Il, Elle, and On= He, She, and One(it’s kind of strange, I’ll go into that a little later)

Nous= We

Vous= You(two or more people, or someone you want to show respect/do not know)

Ils, Elles= They(Ils being masculine, Elles being feminine)

 

 

Note: Even if there’s just one boy in a group of a thousand girls, the “they” will be masculine. That’s all you need, just one guy, because one rotten apple spoils the whole basket. Also, Il and Elle will translate as “it,” but it depends whether or not the noun is a masculine or feminine as to which you’ll use. More on that when we go over some basics with nouns in a future lesson.

 

Now. On to verbs. They are the potatoes of the meat and potatoes of French language. The meat would be the nouns, and we’ll deal with those later.

 

Okay. So now I’m gonna teach you how to conjugate verbs. Most of the really useful verbs are irregular and won’t adhere to the 3 basic patterns for conjugation that you’re about to learn, but we’ll deal with irregular verbs later. Probably 80% of French verbs are regular, so you’re not wasting your time here, I promise(and yeah, I did come up w/ that statistic off the top of my head, but it can’t be too far off).

 

ER verbs are the most common. They’re called ER verbs because their infinitive form ends with an ER. Simple enough, right? Parler, chanter, danser, and marcher are all examples of ER verbs that you are going to get to work with in this lesson. Parler means to speak, chanter=to sing, danser=to dance, and marcher=to walk(as in marching, though) or to work(as in to function, like, “The car works!” would be “La voiture marche!”).

 

Note: The infinitive form of a verb, in case you’re wondering, is the verb before you do anything to it. The English equivalent should almost always have “to” as part of it(see how I translated them in the paragraph above? There you go). When you go to look up a verb in a dictionary, you’ll have to look up the infinitive form.

 

Here’s how an ER verb is conjugated in the present indicative tense(and ignore that whole “indicative” bit, no one really cares that it’s indicative, I only include it because some teachers and professors are mean and will try to use it to trip you up—the only important thing is knowing that it’s in the present tense):

 

 

PARLER

Je parle                      Nous parlons

Tu parles                    Vous parlez

Il/Elle/On parle           Ils/Elles parlent

 

 

Do you see what happened there? First, you take off that all-important ER end, and you’re left with the stem “parl.” Then, depending on which pronoun you’re using, you tack a different ending on. The endings for ER verbs, in case you are stupid and did not notice them in bold, are:

 

=e                    =ons

=es                  =ez

=e                    =ent

 

If you go back and look at that, it should make sense, at least the mechanics of it. If it doesn’t, then you’re screwed and should go take pig latin instead. ;) Just to help cement the idea, here’s another example:

 

 

CHANTER

Je chante                   Nous chantons

Tu chantes                 Vous chantez

Il/Elle/On chante         Ils/Elles chantent

 

 

Got it? I really hope so. There’s a lot more difficult stuff to come, so the sooner you nail this, the better.

 

Some side notes: See how the tu form ends in an s? That is a trademark tu move. With the exception of maybe two irregular verbs, the tu(singular 2^nd person) is always going to have “s” as the last letter in the present tense form, regardless of what kind of verb it is, and this carries through for many other tenses, too.

 

Also, it’s important to go ahead and note that you never pronounce that end “ent” in the ils/elles form(3^rd person plural). “Ent” is silent. Why? Because the French are trixy like that. No one told me about it until I got to my third year of French, so be glad you’re ahead of the game. You will, however, tend to hold out whatever letter comes right before the “ent” so as to differentiate between “Il parle” and “Ils parlent,” since you don’t pronounce the end “s” either.

 

Okay. Moving on to the RE verbs. They’re actually pretty simple, so why people make a big fuss about them being difficult is beyond me.

 

Well, unless it’s to waste time in French class, which is almost a certainty. And in that case, I suppose it makes sense. If you don’t care about learning anything, that is.

 

 

ATTENDRE=to wait

 

J’attends                    Nous attendons

Tu attends                  Vous attendez

Il/Elle/On attend         Ils/Elles attendent

 

 

You do see the pattern this time, right?

=s                    =ons

=s                    =ez

=(nothing!)      =ent

 

A couple of notes at this point: the forms on the left are singular, where the ones on the right are plural. I probably should have told you that earlier, but you’ll survive. This means that Je is first person singular, Tu is second person singular, etc, whereas Nous is first person plural, etc.

 

Il and Elle are third person singular, obviously, but On is a strange little pronoun; the best English equivalent is “One,” but that doesn’t convey the real meaning.

 

On is sort of a general term the French use sort of in place of “we” at times. Your teacher might even tell you that it IS “we,” but don’t you dare use it like that because there’s a 95% chance you’ll use it incorrectly. We’ll go into how to deal with On in later lessons, but for now, you’re safest just not using it.

 

Another thing you might have noticed is how I made a contraction with “J’attends.” You do this with Je when the verb starts with a vowel. Also, when you have a verb that starts with a vowel, you’ll put a “z” sort of sound at the end of Nous and Vous, connecting it to the verb. They call this a liaison. Basically, Nous will sound like “news,” maybe w/ a little more Z, and Vous should rhyme with that. Again, only for verbs that start with vowels. There are other times where you’ll use the liaison, but not right now.

 

On to IR verbs, my least favorite and perhaps a little trixier:

 

FINIR=to finish

 

Je finis                                    Nous finissons

Tu finis                                    Vous finissez

Il/Elle/On finit                          Ils/Elles finissent

 

 

IR verbs look kind of funny, huh? Here’re the endings w/out a stem, just for you:

 

=is                   =issons

=is                   =issez

=it                    =issent

 

Actually, if you look closely, there’s a slight correlation between the RE and IR forms on the singular side:

 

RE                   IR

=s                    =is

=s                    =is

=(nothing!)      =it

 

They’re not dead ringers, but noticing similarities here and there will really help you later when you get to irregular verbs and can’t recall from memory whether to put a t on the end or an s. Go back and look at the endings for the plural forms, too, and you should notice another pattern. 99% of the time, Nous and Vous will keep their respective endings. Of course, when we move out of the present tense, it can be a different story entirely.

 

This is all great, I’m sure you’re saying, but why do I care about being able to conjugate, besides so I can ace my tests? Well, because otherwise you’ll sound like a caveman. Or worse, a poor Japanese tourist reading from a guidebook(I would say American tourist, but we all know that American tourists just demand that everyone speak English to them). We conjugate in English, but not quite as much as in French(at least, when you look at the present tense).

 

I speak                                    We speak

You speak                              You(Ya’ll in the South) speak

He/she/it speaks                   They speak

 

Let’s face it, English conjugation in the present tense is pretty darn easy compared to French. Conjugating correctly is still important in English, though.  “I speaks” just sounds wrong and makes my inner Grammar Nazi want to hurt someone, and French people will want to cringe just as much if you make an equivalent mistake. Really, though, at least spoken, the French forms are very much the same. Parle, Parles, Parle and Parlent sound the same, which only leaves you Parlons and Parlez to screw up when you speak.

 

Again, you say, that was all well and good to learn, but why do I care? Because this is how you start to form sentences and actually say things. It works= Il marche. I am speaking=Je parle.

 

See? Not only can you speak to someone, you can tell them you’re speaking. The French present tense conveys three meanings/can be translated three ways, and I’ll use ÉCOUTER(to listen) to show you how that can work:

 

J’écoute= I listen. I do listen. I am listening.

Vous écoutez=You listen. You do listen. You are listening.

 

I think you get the idea. Now, hopefully you understand the basics of how to conjugate, and what it all means, plus whatever else you learned from the side notes.