Archive for 'Grammar'
French Grammar – Back to the future Posted by Tim Hildreth on Mar 27, 2018
Last week I kicked off a short series of posts on useful French grammar topics that sometimes get ignored. This week we head back to the future* with a look at a way to talk about upcoming actions and events that is as easy as the passé récent that we looked at last week. Le…
French Grammar – The Recent Past Posted by Tim Hildreth on Mar 20, 2018
This week I’m starting a mini-series to address some useful ways for talking about actions and events in time that don’t always gets as much attention as other tenses. First up, an easy way to talk about things that happened in the past without resorting to the passé composé or the more literary passé simple…
French Grammar – Sometimes even être needs a vacation Posted by Tim Hildreth on Mar 13, 2018
Back in décembre (December) I shared a post about how sometimes the famous “House of être” needs to make room for guests. This week we’re going to look at some examples of the opposite… when verbs that usually take the verb être to from the passé composé switch teams and take the verb avoir…
Buying A Glass In French – Don’t Forget The Drink! Posted by John Bauer on Jan 24, 2018
Don’t be afraid of making mistakes when you speak French! Not knowing how to say simple words like mattress or shorts have put me in some strange situations, but if I had been too afraid to speak, I would never have learned les nouveaux mots (the new words) at all! Between looking at someone dans…
French Vocabulary – The Senses, An Update Posted by Tim Hildreth on Jan 23, 2018
A few years ago, the team at Transparent Language published a blog post with the key vocabulary related to the senses. It seemed like a good time to revisit that topic and spice it up with some multimedia! This week we’ll look at (and listen to!) les cinq sens (the five senses). Les cinq sens…
Transparent Language French Blog: Best Of 2017 Posted by John Bauer on Dec 27, 2017
With les fêtes (the holidays) wrapping up, I hope everyone was able to enjoy Noël (Christmas), Hanoucca (Hanukkah), or any other fête during these cold winter months. Le nouvel an (the new year) is nearly here and while everyone is busy putting up their new calendrier (calendar), it’s a good time for us here at…
French Grammar – Putting an addition on the “the house of être” Posted by Tim Hildreth on Dec 5, 2017
êFrench uses helping verbs to form the past tense form known as the passé compose (the composed past)*. Most verbs use avoir as their helping verb while a select group though use être. While this rule is generally true, there is a special case when even verbs that usually take avoir use être to form…