Tag Archives: French language
French Grammar – What happened? Posted by Tim Hildreth on Apr 10, 2018
To wrap up this latest series of grammar posts, here is a little story for you to practice your reading comprehension and to test your ability to recognize the different verb tenses. Mon fils vient de partir. Nous avons diné ensemble. On était censé diner chez mon frère, mais il a décommandé au dernier moment…
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…
Too much of a good thing Posted by Tim Hildreth on Mar 6, 2018
February is over, and we’ve moved on to le mois de mars (the month of March). So much of février is dedicated to l’amour (love) (including some of my own blog posts!) that I thought we could perhaps use a little bit of a palette cleanser to put all the calins, baisers, et amour (hugs…
French Vocabulary – Winter Olympics Edition Posted by Tim Hildreth on Feb 13, 2018
The games of the XXIII Winter Olympics began last week in PeyongChang, South Korea. And since French is one of the official languages of the Jeux olympique (Olympic games, often abbreviated in French as les JO), I thought we’d take a look this week at some useful French Olympics vocabulary. Les sports des JO d’hiver…
French Vocabulary – Drinks Posted by Tim Hildreth on Feb 6, 2018
Everyone knows the French love to eat. But they also love to drink. John’s recent post on sharing a drink with friends got me thinking about vocabulary for drinks. Commençons avec un peu de vocabulaire (Let’s begin with a little vocabulary) Quand j’ai* soif, je bois. (When I’m thirsty, I drink). The verb for to…