Without grammar, French wouldn’t be so beautiful. The building blocks and structure of the French language would lack order, finesse and its well-loved prestige.<\/p>\n
And although French language learners tend to find grammar intimidating, the topic hardly deserves its bad rap.<\/p>\n
In fact, French grammar isn’t that difficult to grasp.<\/p>\n
In this post, we’ll look at all the major topics in French grammar, boiled down to their most basic concepts for easy consumption (with links to our deep dives on each topic.) To make it easier, we’ll throw in examples with audio clips to help with pronunciation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
[fluentu-toc]<\/p>\n
Like in English, a noun in French generally denotes a person, place or thing.<\/p>\n
These nouns can be concrete, meaning they can be physically found in the real world like a building or a person, or they can also be abstract, like an idea: equality or freedom.<\/p>\n
Nouns can also be proper or common. Proper nouns have capital letters as their first letter and denote specific people, places or things, like these nouns:<\/p>\n
Common nouns do not take capital letters, such as:<\/p>\n
In short, every noun in French has a gender<\/a>. That means nouns can be masculin <\/em>(masculine) or f\u00e9minin <\/em>(feminine).<\/p>\n This seems logical for nouns that denote a person, but inanimate objects such as la table <\/em>(the table) and le livre \u00a0 <\/em>(the book) have genders too.<\/p>\n Some word endings in French follow patterns that let us know whether a word is masculine and feminine, but generally, it’s best to memorize the gender of the French word<\/a> when learning it. Here a some examples of both genders:<\/p>\n Masculine nouns:<\/p>\n Feminine nouns:<\/p>\n Like in English, French nouns change when they become plural<\/a> (more than one). The most basic form of this is by adding an -s<\/em> as in English.<\/p>\n There are plenty of nouns that don’t follow that rule, however. Lucky for us, a lot of these nouns follow regular patterns. Once learned, they can be applied to most nouns with those endings with only a few exceptions.<\/p>\n Regular plural forms:<\/p>\n Irregular plural forms<\/a>:<\/p>\n Every noun in French needs an article<\/a>. This article is determined by its gender, its number and whether you’re talking about a specific instance of that noun.<\/p>\n There are three indefinite articles in French that do not specify a particular noun:<\/p>\n Definite articles do specify the noun being spoken about:<\/p>\n Noun case<\/a> lets us know what a noun’s specific function is. Look at the following sentence:<\/p>\n In this sentence:<\/p>\n All of these nouns have different functions in the sentence.<\/p>\n Unlike in other languages like German or Russian, the noun and its article do not change depending on their case (or function).<\/p>\n These are perhaps the most intricate part of French grammar. Let’s check out why.<\/p>\n The most common function of a verb in a sentence is that it is an action word. That means it shows what the\u00a0sujet<\/em> (the subject) of the sentence is doing.<\/p>\n These action word verbs can also take objects. For example in the sentence:<\/p>\n La pomme<\/em> is the\u00a0compl\u00e9ment d’objet direct <\/em>(the direct object). This shows that the action of\u00a0manger<\/em> is being done to\u00a0la pomme<\/em>.<\/p>\n Verbs can also have a compl\u00e9ment d’object indirect <\/em>(the indirect object). These words are “receivers” of the verbs. For example, in the sentence:<\/p>\n The noun la police<\/em> is in the compl\u00e9ment d’objet indirect<\/em> position. This is shown with the preposition\u00a0\u00e0<\/em> (to).<\/p>\n Unlike action verbs, stative verbs do not determine an action. Instead, they denote a “state.” Stative verbs do not take compl\u00e9ment d’objet direct<\/em> or\u00a0compl\u00e9ment d’objet indirect<\/em> nouns.<\/p>\n The most common of the stative verbs in French is the verb\u00a0\u00eatre\u00a0<\/em>(to be)<\/a>.\u00a0Other common stative verbs include\u00a0devenir\u00a0<\/em>(to become), sembler\u00a0<\/em>(to seem) and\u00a0avoir l’air<\/em> (to seem). Here they are used in sentences:<\/p>\n The infinitive of the verb is the unconjugated form, also known as the dictionary form. This is because you will see this form of the verb in the dictionary.<\/p>\n Often, the infinitive form of the verb is used when it follows a conjugated verb, as well as modal verbs:<\/p>\n The infinitive form of the verb can also be used with impersonal expressions:<\/p>\n In French, we often talk about regular and irregular verbs.<\/p>\n Regular verbs<\/a> follow a pattern. These regular verbs can be put into three distinct groups based on the verb ending pattern.<\/p>\n The first group of regular verbs are verbs that end in -er<\/em>. The second group of regular verbs are verbs that end in -ir<\/em>. The last group of verbs includes those that end in -re<\/em>. Here are some examples:<\/p>\n The third group also includes verbs that do not follow a pattern based on their ending. These are known as irregular verbs<\/a>. Here are some common irregular verbs:<\/p>\n Conjugation describes how a verb changes in order to agree with the subject and the tense of the verb. Verb conjugation<\/a> often follows simple formation rules.<\/p>\n Each verb contains two things: a root and an ending. The root can also be called the “radical” or the “stem,” but it is the unchanging part of the verb.<\/p>\n The ending is where verb conjugation occurs. These change depending on the subject and tense of the verb. Here is one verb’s conjugation in the present tense:<\/p>\n A verb tense anchors a verb in time. In other words, it lets us know when a certain verb is happening.<\/p>\n French has around 20 verb tenses. This number, however, uses the word “tense” liberally, choosing to mean all the ways a verb can change. However, if we take the word “tense” to only talk about a verb in time, there are far fewer tenses.<\/p>\n For now, let’s look at the eight basic and compound tenses.<\/p>\n 1.<\/strong> Le pr\u00e9sent<\/strong><\/em> is the present tense<\/a> in French. This is the tense that lets us know that an action is happening right now. It is important to note that the French present tense encompasses different present tenses from English.<\/p>\n\n
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Number<\/h3>\n
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Articles<\/h3>\n
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Case<\/h3>\n
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2. Verbs<\/h2>\n
Action Verbs<\/h3>\n
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Stative Verbs<\/h3>\n
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Infinitive<\/h3>\n
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Verb Groups<\/h3>\n
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Conjugation<\/h3>\n
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3. Tenses<\/h2>\n