Révision

Revision

Every seventh lesson of this course is devoted to revising and explaining in greater detail what you have learned over the previous days.

Gender

Every French noun is either masculine or feminine. Masculine nouns take le and un; feminine nouns take la and une. There is no neuter pronoun like English it. Words for woman, wife, grandmother and girl are feminine, while words for man and boy are masculine, but many everyday nouns simply have to be learned with their article. The book suggests writing nouns in masculine and feminine columns: un/le boulevard, un/le café, un/le croissant, un/l'hôtel, un/le lit, un/le métro and un/le plan; une/la chambre, une/la tartine, une/la fille, une/la fontaine, une/l'heure, une/la minute, une/la montre, une/la nuit and une/la salle de bains. Genders matter because adjectives agree with the nouns they describe: un grand lit, but une grande chambre.

Verbs

French verbs are divided into three groups according to the ending of the infinitive. The largest group ends in -er: appeler, chercher, désirer, penser, présenter, tourner and traverser. Verb endings change according to the person doing the action: je pense, vous pensez, nous pensons. There is no continuous verb form in French, so je cherche means both I look for and I am looking for. You have also seen être: je suis, il/elle est, vous êtes; and aller: je vais, il/elle va, nous allons, vous allez, ils/elles vont. To make a negative, put ne, or n' before a vowel, and pas around the verb: Je n'ai pas l'heure; Il n'est pas breton.

The alphabet

French letter names are used when spelling words aloud. The book gives: a [ah], b [bay], c [say], d [day], e [uh], f [ef], g [zhay], h [ash], i [ee], j [zhee], k [kah], l [el], m [em], n [en], o [oh], p [pay], q between [koo] and [kew], r [er], s [ess], t [tay], u [ew], v [vay], w [doobluh-vay], x [eeks], y [ee grek], z [zed]. The letter y is i grec, Greek i, and w is double v. For a double letter, you can repeat the letter or say double. The pronoun je is not capitalized unless it begins a sentence.

Vocabulary

French is a Romance language, so much of its vocabulary comes from Latin. English often has pairs like kingly and regal, but French may have just one word, which can make the language seem more formal at first. French and English share many roots, but beware of false friends: retard means late, though it is linked to English tardy. Be careful with French words that look like English words but are pronounced differently, such as Jean, a man's name pronounced [zhohn].

Don't worry: after only a couple of weeks of regular practice, all these new things - pronunciations, word orders, genders and so on - will be almost second nature.