Tag Archives: French grammar
French Grammar – Depuis Posted by Transparent Language on Aug 3, 2009
Today a little grammar. Here are some sentences you might hear if you are talking to French people: Vous êtes en France depuis quand? (How long have you been in France?) Vous habitez Paris depuis combien de temps? (How long have you been living in Paris?) J’habite à Paris depuis quinze ans. (I’ve been living…
French Grammar – Punctuation Marks Posted by Transparent Language on Jun 5, 2009
Punctuation is sometimes different in the French language. I first came across this when reading Albert Camus’ La Chute in my literature class at the Sorbonne back when I was a student in Paris. I found it so bizarre to see the direct speech noted in the sentence « Voulez-vous d’une vie propre? Comme tout…
French Grammar – The Partitive Article Posted by Transparent Language on Apr 29, 2009
The partitive article in French is the English equivalent of ‘some’ and ‘any’. So, it is very often used and thus, very important to learn. First, let’s talk about the form: Before a masculine noun – du Before a feminine noun – de la Before a masculine or feminine plural noun – des Before a…
French Vocabulary – Word Building Posted by Transparent Language on Apr 19, 2009
Building funny French phrases is a way to learn more vocabulary and even improve your grammar. The challenge lies in finding a root word and then expressing the same word as a noun, adverb, verb and adjective all in the same sentence. Here are some examples: La commode commode a été accommodée commodément. Le commentateur…
French Language – Negation Posted by Transparent Language on Mar 28, 2009
In the French language, there are different ways to be negative…to express negativity. Perhaps the most common is when you want the sentence to be negative. In that case, you place ne before the main verb and pas after it. Or, if you want to say that you never do something, you place ne before…
French Language – Semi Auxiliaries Posted by Transparent Language on Mar 27, 2009
In the French language, semi-auxiliaries are the same as in the English language. They are multi-word verbs that occur before main verbs. In English, these semi-auxiliaries include: have to, get to, be about to, used to, mean to, be going to, etc. In French, many of the semi-auxiliaries are the same as the English ones…
French Language – Voilà or Il y a Posted by Transparent Language on Mar 17, 2009
Voilà is one of my favorite expressions in French. It just seems so French and much more appealing than its English equivalents: ‘there is’ and ‘there are’. However, you must be careful because Il y a has the same English translation so to speak, but the meaning or useage is different. Voilà is used as if you are pointing…