Archive for February, 2015
Get Yourself A Valentine – Pick-up Lines in French Posted by Josh Dougherty on Feb 10, 2015
Well, it’s that time of the year. You either have a Valentine, want one, or completely dislike the holiday. No matter your feelings, love is something that needs to be experienced, so if you’re single and ready to mingle and want to try meeting some new people, why not do it in French? After all…
Subjunctive: Irregular and Stem-Changing Verbs Posted by Elizabeth Schmermund on Feb 9, 2015
As I mentioned last week, besides evaluating in which circumstances to use the French subjunctive, the most difficult part of this mood is learning how to conjugate irregular and stem-changing verbs into the subjunctive. Luckily, there are only about 10 verbs that are irregular and 10 verbs that are stem-changing in the subjunctive – although…
How to French Kiss — But Not That Way! Posted by Josh Dougherty on Feb 6, 2015
We aren’t talking about THAT French kiss (that’s une pelle – literally, a shovel. The verb for to French kiss is rouler une pelle [to wrap/roll a shovel]- you can put that image together.), no, we’re going to talk about the art of la bise (kiss). When meeting someone in France, faire la bise is…
French Adverbs And Their Minds Posted by John Bauer on Feb 4, 2015
There’s a cool trick to forming adverbes that lies in the history of la langue française. This trick doesn’t apply to all adverbes, only those that end in –ment. Franchement Joyeusement Seulement Artificiellement It’s easy to see how these adverbes are formed with some root and then add –ment to them. What’s less obvious is…
Delving into the French Subjunctive Posted by Elizabeth Schmermund on Feb 2, 2015
Last week, I spent some time introducing what the subjunctive mood expresses and how it is used in other languages, such as English. You can visit that post here. This week, I would like to go into more concrete examples of how to form the present subjunctive and, just as importantly, how you can recognize when…