French 1 Chapter 1

Une amie et un ami

·         Describing a person (what they are like, where they are from)

·         Ask or tell who someone is

·         Talk about students from France

Être, or “to be”, is one of the most important verbs in any language. Here are the conjugations for the verb:

·         Je suis

·         Tu es

·         Il est

·         Nous sommes

·         Vous êtes

·         Ils sont

Cognates are words that are similar in meaning and spelling between the English and French words. Such examples include:

·         Américain, American

·         Blond, Blonde

·         Intéressant, Interesting

·         Assez

·         Très

·         Vraiment

Example: “Il est assez intelligent”, versus “Il est amusant.”

Every noun in French is either masculine or feminine. You usually cannot tell what gender a noun is by looking at it, with the exception of people of course.

“Un” and “Une” are the articles in French. These correspond to “a” or “an” in English. “Un” is masculine, and “une” is feminine.

Example:

·         Un ami, Une amie

·         Un frère, Une sœur

·         Un collège, une école

The definite articles (“the” in English) are “la”, and “le.”

Example:

·         Le garçon, la fille

·         Le frère, la sœur

·         L’ami, l’amie

Notice how in the last example, the “le” and “la” became simply “l’” (pronounced “L Apostrophe”). In French, when a vowel ends an article and the beginning of the noun is a vowel, you remove the vowel in the article and put an apostrophe. The term for this is “elison.”

To say something is not something, otherwise known as sentence negation, you put “ne” and “pas” around the verb. In front of a vowel, “ne” becomes “n’.”

Example:

·         Je ne suis pas français.

·         Je ne suis pas amusant.

·         Tu n’es pas de Paris.