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Le Passé Simple…in Action! Posted by Elizabeth Schmermund on Apr 11, 2016
Now that you’ve learned about what the simple past tense in French does and how to conjugate regular and irregular verbs, let’s take a look how it is used in classic works of literature. Here’s a passage from Guy de Maupassant’s famous short story “Les Bijoux”: Il chercha longtemps dans le tas de clinquant qu’elle…
Le Passé Simple for Irregular French Verbs Posted by Elizabeth Schmermund on Apr 4, 2016
Last week, I introduced the simple past tense and showed you how to conjugate regular French verbs in this literary tense. However, as you probably know … not all French verbs are regular. In fact, many verbs are conjugated irregularly in French. Today, we will go over these difficult irregular verbs in the past simple…
Le Passé Simple for Regular Verbs Posted by Elizabeth Schmermund on Mar 28, 2016
Have you ever heard of a French verb tense called “le passé simple”? The preterit, or the simple past, as it is known in English, is used primarily in literature and very formal speech. However, in modern French usage the simple past tense is rarely used and, frankly, going out of style. However, this doesn’t…
Stacey Kent’s: “Les Eaux de Mars” (French cover of Antônio Carlos Jobim’s “The Waters of March”) Posted by Elizabeth Schmermund on Mar 21, 2016
As the month of March draws to a close, I am reminded of the beautiful Brazilian song “Águas de Março” (in English: “The Waters of March”), written and recorded by Antônio Carlos Jobim in 1973. The song is about Brazil’s rainiest month and each, disparate image in the song revolves around the central metaphor of the end of…
French Interrogatives: Inversion Posted by Elizabeth Schmermund on Mar 14, 2016
Jumping off my post from last week, I’ll spend more time this week describing how you can use inversion to create an interrogative sentence (a question) in French. Inversion is when you change the order of the subject and verb in a declarative sentence to create a question. Thus, the order in the interrogative…
French Questions (interrogative sentences) Posted by Elizabeth Schmermund on Mar 7, 2016
In English, we often speak about the five Ws when teaching English language learners: who, what, where, when, and why. These words are added on to the beginning of a sentence in English to ask questions (in English, you can also change word order to ask a question). In French, asking a question is different…
Le Prénom Posted by Elizabeth Schmermund on Feb 29, 2016
I rarely am awake to watch movies from beginning to end…except if they are spectacular. Well, yesterday, my husband and I stumbled upon a French film on Netflix called Le Prénom–and it was so good I watched the whole thing! The English version is titled “What’s in a Name?,” which differs, of course, from the…