Archive for 'Grammar'
What Are the French Parts of Speech? Posted by Elizabeth Schmermund on Feb 27, 2017
Most native English speakers are familiar with the eight or nine English parts of speech (nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, interjections, and articles). All English words fall into one of these general parts of speech. Luckily, French follows the same basic organization of parts of speech that English does. Called les classes de mots, French parts…
Love and animals? Posted by Tim Hildreth on Feb 14, 2017
Happy Valentine’s Day! C’est le 14 février*. Le jour des amoureux ! (It’s the 14th of February. The day of lovers!) In honor of the day, I thought a little song about love was in order. Malheureusement (Sadly), l’amour n’est pas toujours facile ! (love isn’t always easy!) So while today’s song is about love…
It’s all about you Posted by Tim Hildreth on Feb 7, 2017
Whereas English only has one from of the word ‘you’ (serving as both the singular and plural*) French, like many languages, has two (tu and vous). But do you know why? And do you know when to use them? ‘Tu‘ and ‘vous‘ are personal pronouns that replace (or refer to) the subject of a…
Third time is charming Posted by Tim Hildreth on Jan 24, 2017
Over the last few weeks I’ve been sharing some of my favorite French songs with you to help build vocabulary and pronunciation. While the 80’s where the heyday of rich story songs, all the great story songs aren’t from then. This week, a song that goes back a little bit further which many will recognize…
Music and lyrics Posted by Tim Hildreth on Jan 10, 2017
If you’ve been following my blog posts this past year, you know that I love a good song. And what’s a good song, other than a story set to music? And who doesn’t love a good story? The 1980’s was the heyday of good story-songs and they are a great tool for learning language and…
The Ultimate Transparent French Blog 2016 Year in Review Quiz Posted by Josh Dougherty on Jan 5, 2017
Another year has come and gone, and what a year it was. The team at Transparent has had a lot of fun writing articles for you every week, but now we’re going to test to see how much you retained 😉 In 2016, the French blog received almost one million hits! We also added another…
French Question: Why is it “Le Nouvel An” and not “Le Nouveau An”? Posted by Elizabeth Schmermund on Jan 4, 2017
Bonne année! Happy New Year! I wish all of our Transparent French readers a happy and healthy 2017. Talking about the new year in French can be especially difficult. This is because there are two words that mean “year”–an (m) and année (f)–and because both of these words start with a vowel, which can change the word that…