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French Grammar

What is an adjective in French?

So if you want to improve your French speaking, and if you want to learn more about the placement of French adjectives in a sentence.

You will discover easy ways to help you understand French adjectives and  French grammar rules.

Wouldn’t be amazing to speak without asking yourself if your sentence make sense?

Would you like to find your words easily and express your opinions accurately?

Before starting our grammar journey about adjectives, remember that learning French is fun and easy. Stop telling yourself how hard French is and start focusing on the positive.

Yes, you read that right. Learning French can be easy. There are many simple tools you can use to simplify your French learning and make swift progress in the language.

Take the “hardest” grammar and vocabulary points and make them yours, by following French Lessons Australia Free Lessons.

To start your language journey today, let’s dive into the first thing to know about Adjectives.

1. How to use French Adjectives?

Adjectives are used to qualify a thing or a person.

Examples:

Grasse est la capitale mondiale des parfums.

(Grasse is the world capital of perfume.)

They agree in gender and number with the noun to which they relate.

In general, they take a -e in the feminine, and a -s in the plural.

Examples:

– Il est grand et fort. He is big and strong. (masculine singular)

– Elle est grande et forte. She is tall and strong. (feminine singular)

– Ils sont grands et forts. They are tall and strong. (Plural masculine)

– Elles sont grandes et fortes. They are big and strong. (Feminine plural).

Some adjectives change form to feminine. Here is a list.

 
Some common adjectives are irregular. Their feminine versions follow another rule.
2. Where do we put them?

Generally, most qualifying adjectives are placed after the noun.

However, some are placed before the name. Here is, in a schematic form, the general rule.

2.What do we have to do when a noun has two French adjectives or more?

1 If the two adjectives normally go before the noun, they go together with an

Ex. A good and nice boy Un bon et gentil garçon.

2 If an adjective goes before the noun and one after, they are both placed after the noun with “and”:

Ex. A good and hearty meal. Un repas bon et copieux.

3 We can put an adjective before and after:

Ex. A beautiful gray hat. Un beau chapeau gris.

4 If the two adjectives normally go after the noun they are placed there with on and

Ex: She is a friendly and sincere woman. C’est une femme amicale et sincère.

Remember We do not put a long adjective before a noun of a single syllable.

That’s all for adjectives.

 

You have all you need to speak French.If you want more you can go to our website and find out more about French grammar and vocabulary.

If you want to practice your French conversation  just enroll in one of our amazing French Lessons.

Falloir
French Grammar

All about the French verb Falloir to be necessary

Do you know how to say “it’s necessary to” in French? Falloir ? It’s easy and it’s here

Do you need to learn this (Falloir)?

It’s totally necessary to understand what “Il faut” is in the French Language.

If you have been to France before or if you know some French friends, you have probably heard these two words over and over again.

Il faut aller faire des courses

We have to go shopping!

Il faut t’habiller chaudement

You must dress warmly.

Il faut faire tes devoirs !

You have to do your homework !

Il faut means a necessity, an obligation. It also can be used to express directions or orders.

Do you know how to say “it’s necessary to” (Falloir) in French?

Learning French can be tricky but we, at French Lessons Australia are here to help. With this simply online and totally free lesson, you will understand easily how to use the French verb Falloir.

Falloir is an irregular French verb, and it means to need, to be necessary to.

It’s one of the easiest verbs as it is an impersonal one.

It means it has only one conjugation in each tense and mood. Easy! ?

Our today’s French lesson allows you to learn French faster.

Let’s get our feet wet!

Falloir has just one conjugation in each tense and mood. The third person singular which may be followed by either an infinitive or a noun or a subjunctive.

  • To express something mandatory, to make strong suggestions, to give directions we use Falloir followed by an infinitive verb.

Il faut faire tes devoirs tous les jours !

You have to do your homework every day.

Il faut préparer tes affaires le soir, si tu ne veux pas être en retard le matin.

You must prepare your things in the evening, if you do not want to be late in the morning.

Il faut prendre à gauche après le magasin.

You have to take a left after the shop.

Il Faut + Infinitive

  • To express something more personal or if you want to make a recommendation to someone in particular you have to use Falloir followed by subjunctive.

Il faut que tu fasses tes devoirs !

<pIl faut que tu prépares tes affaires le soir…

Il faut que nous prenions à gauche

Il faut + que + subject pronouns + subjunctive

  • When you want to express a need we use il faut followed by a noun.

Il faut du temps We need time.

Il faut une voiture We need a car.

If you want to make it more personal you can add a pronoun.

Il me faut du temps.

Il nous faut une voiture.

Il faut + nom

OR

Il + pronoun + faut + nom

Now you are ready to speak French so enrol in one of our wonderful classes at French Lessons Australia. Whatever you choose conversational class, private tuition we are here to help and we have much to offer click here to get more.

THE PASSÉ COMPOSÉ WITH THE VERB “AVOIR”
French Grammar

The passé composé with the verb “avoir”

 

The ”passé composé” is the present perfect tense. This tense is used a lot in French to describe a situation that happened in the past at a definite time but that still has a meaning for today… Seems very theoretical, but really, it is not as you will see soon with French Lessons Australia!

 

When to use it?

The passé composé is the usual tense for events and incidents that happened in a close past. Unlike the English present perfect, the passé composé is used very often by French people.

Some time indicators can be used in addition to strengthen this relation between past and present! For instance: hier (yesterday), l’autre jour (the other day), samedi passé (last Saturday), plusieurs fois (several times), l’année passée (last year),

As you can see, it is not necessary to be very recent to use the passé composé. As soon as the information is still relevant with today, the passé composé is appropriate.

Obviously, the passé composé is not the only past tense used in French. The imperfect tense and the past simple tense are also used as we will see in another post on French Lessons Brisbane. However, the passé composé is one of the predominant tense in everyday’s language!

 

How to use it?

The passé composé is, as its name suggests, a compound tense. Which means that it can be compounded with either the auxiliary ‘être’ or ‘avoir’, followed by the past participle of the verb.

The passé composé of most of the French verbs is used with the ‘avoir’.

Let’s take the action of eating. To say that you ate some bread this morning, you will say in French ”j’ai mangé du pain ce matin”. In fact, in English, you could have said either ”I ate some bread”, or ”I have eaten”, or even ”I did eat”. In French, you will only use the passé composé and say ”J’ai mangé”.

The only things you need to know to form the passé composé is the conjugation of the verb ‘avoir’ to the present tense.

J’ai

Tu as

Il/Elle a

Nous avons

Vous avez

Ils/Elles ont

 

To that, you will need to add the past participle of the verb you want to conjugate. If the verb is regular, its past participle will mostly be regular. Which means you can guess it without having to know it by heart.

For instance, regular verbs ending by ER will have see their ER displaced by a ‘e’. Therefore, acheter (to buy) will be acheté (bought), manger (to eat) will be mangé (eaten), commencer (to start) will be commencé (started).

Regular verbs ending by IR will have their IR displaced by a ‘i’. Therefore, finir (to finish) will be fini (finished), choisir (to choose) will be choisi (chosen).

And finally, regular verbs ending by RE will have their RE displaced by a ‘u’. Therefore, perdre (to lose) will be perdu (lost), attendre (to wait) will be attendu (waited).

Easy, right?

Well, now, as in English, there are a few irregular verbs which will see their past participle changing differently.

For example, etre (to be) will be été (been), pouvoir (to can) will be pu (could), voir (to see) will be vu (seen), apprendre (to learn) will be appris (learnt), rire (to laugh) will be ri (laughed), etc…

 

If you want to learn more about French tenses, or just to know more about French in general and what we do at French Lessons Australia, don’t hesitate to contact us at  info@french-lessons-australia.com

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