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French Verbs – Conjugation I Posted by Transparent Language on Mar 16, 2010
French verb conjugation can be tricky. But it’s all about groups. All you have to do is know what group the verb belongs to and conjugate it accordingly using the root of the verb and the correct conjugation suffix. In today’s article, we’ll talk about the first group known as -er verbs. And here is…
L’École des Stars Posted by Transparent Language on Dec 28, 2009
Over 2000 candidates from all over France tried out to be one of the 32 kids aged 8-12 to compete in the French TV children’s singing contest broadcast on Direct 8 called L’Ècole des Stars. This year, the winner was 9-year-old Léo from la Loire. He performed the songs ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ and ‘Le…
French Prepositions Posted by Transparent Language on Dec 9, 2009
One of the challenging things about learning a new language is getting the prepositions right because as much as you may want to directly translate them, you will almost always get into trouble doing this. So, today, I’ll give you some examples of preposition use that you just have to know by heart (à connaître…
Animal Answers Posted by Transparent Language on Dec 6, 2009
Here are the correct groups for the different animals I mentioned in the article a few days ago: animaux de la ferme le cheval (horse) le mouton (sheep) la vache (cow) le canard (duck) l’ane (donkey) la poule (hen) le cochon (pig) animaux de compagnie le chien (dog) le perroquet (parrot) le poisson rouge (goldfish)…
To Agree or Not Agree in French Posted by Transparent Language on Dec 3, 2009
“Je ne suis pas d’accord avec ce que vous dites, mais je me battrai jusqu’à la mort pour que vous ayez le droit de le dire.” (“I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to death your right to say it.”) – Voltaire Just as this famous French philosopher promised, the…
French Vocabulary – The Senses Posted by Transparent Language on Nov 30, 2009
I’m a big fan of trying to learn groups of words (nouns with the corresponding adjective, adverb, etc.) all at once to improve foreign language vocabulary rather than learning a single word here and there. The association involved really works for me when trying to recall vocabulary. So, I’m going to provide you with…
French Grammar – Definite Articles Posted by Transparent Language on Nov 27, 2009
L’argent ne fait pas le bonheur. (Money doesn’t bring happiness) I came across this saying today and it led me to thinking about how articles and more specifically in this case, definite articles, can be tricky as they are not always used in the same ways in French and English. Just by comparing the French…