duolingo french notes

Remember that ce is invariable, so use c'est for singulars and ce sont for plurals. In general, the best way to tell if a noun is plural is to listen carefully to its article. Most French nouns and adjectives can be pluralized by adding an ending -s, like in English. Most articles can be used immediately after expressions and verbs ending in de, but they must follow contraction and elision rules. In "Conjunctions 1", you learned about coordinating conjunctions, which link similar elements that have equal importance in a sentence. The more familiar tu form should be used with friends, peers, relatives, or children. However, peu can also be a noun, especially when preceded by an article. Possessive pronouns replace a possessive adjective + a noun. Chez can be combined with a pronoun or noun to refer to someone's home or workplace. The verb rendre ("to make") can also indicate that the subject has caused something to happen, but it's used with adjectives instead of verbs. While most Duolingo courses cover an impressive number of relevant grammar topics, they don’t really teach you grammar in any explicit way outside of the brief Tips & Notes sections. However, when used with nouns, demander is particularly confusing because its direct and indirect object are the opposite of its English counterpart, "to ask". — It is hot (outside). In general, words that refer to males are masculine while words that refer to females are feminine. Devant and avant both mean "before", but devant is spatial while avant is temporal. These pronouns aren't interchangeable. In the last example, note that est-ce still appears because est-ce que is a fixed impersonal phrase. French has interrogative adjectives, pronouns, and adverbs. when referring to specific things). They are used in double-verb constructions where the first verb (the semi-auxiliary) is conjugated and the second is not. For instance: Pay attention to this nuance when translating into English. penser à). This is especially common when describing food preparation. For multiple people or things, use the plural forms quelques-uns (masc) and quelques-unes (fem), which are normally translated as "a few", or perhaps "some". ‎Deepen your language skills and knowledge of the French-speaking world through fascinating true stories in easy-to-follow French, with added English for context. It’s the end of the first week of my #80daylanguagechallenge and I am 100% immersed in French! There are some situations where both entre and parmi are acceptable. Also, remember that some adjectives have the same masculine and feminine form, especially those ending in a silent -e (e.g. Numbers in the thousands are also similar to English in structure. Notice above that the verb manger (as well as its English equivalent, "to eat") changes form to agree grammatically with the subject. In a compound tense like the passé composé, adverbs normally come between the auxiliary verb and its participle. — He is awaiting (or "waiting for") his friend. These other one-syllable words can also elide: je, me, te, se, de, ne, and que. Je déteste être ici. Designed by language experts and loved by… For instance: names of professions, religions and a few nouns expressing a status with être; names of languages with parler; and most nouns with devenir. French nouns for persons of a certain nationality are capitalized, but in French, national adjectives and language names are not capitalized. Veuillez is common in official letters, public signage, and correspondence, for example. Like most other pronouns, they agree in gender and number with the noun they replace. After progressing all the way through Duolingo’s French lessons, I went straight to a French language conversational get-together organized through Meetup.com to see how it all worked out, and a very clear picture has emerged of what can be expected from it. Intransitive: The cat is looking at the dog. "his") match the owner. For instance, le femme is incorrect. Consider parler ("to speak"): French has two words for the subject pronoun "you": tu and vous. —PC Magazine. When writing numbers in French, commas are decimal points, while spaces mark thousands places. À can also be used to indicate the purpose of a noun. One of the most common idioms in French is the use of the verb avoir in certain places where English would use the verb "to be". », which means "How are you?" For example if your native language is Spanish and you want to learn French, Duolingo has got it for you. They can be used in place of articles. This has created many etymological patterns that you can use to your advantage when learning new words. Another important distinction is that avoir means "to have" in the sense of "to possess", but not "to consume" or "to experience". For this, use certainement or a close synonym, like absolument or sûrement. This construction appears in "Demonstratives 3". (Never use il est.). When "better" modifies an action or state of being, you must use mieux. Duolingo is the fun, free app for learning 35+ languages through quick, bite-sized lessons. If the verb ends in a vowel, the letter T must be inserted after the verb for euphony. These two verbs are very important because they can act as auxiliary verbs in French, but they differ from their English equivalents. The first is a general statement, while the second is a statement about a real subject. Pres, you have already learned that : The Subjunctive Past is a compound tense and as such, the verb uses the same auxiliary être or avoir as in the indicative mood, and the same rules of agreement are applied in the past participle (Re. As a pronoun ("one"). Some occupations have the same form in both masculine and feminine. On the other hand, the passive voice describes any clause where the subject is not the agent of the verb in the clause. The other type of participle in French is the present participle (participe présent), which is formed by taking the present indicative nous form of a verb and switching the -ons ending to -ant. Note that the nous form of the imperative corresponds to the command in English "let's" + verb. Je regrette qu'il soit ici. Here are some mandatory liaisons, along with approximate pronunciations: Note that some consonants take on a different sound in liaisons to reduce ambiguity. This alternative uses the passé simple tense, one of French's literary tenses. Notice that être verbs involve movement or transformation. You will learn these later. However, if the subject il is a real thing instead of just a dummy subject, then you must use à instead of de. Duolingo is a popular language learning platform that graces millions of users for FREE. On is a versatile and ubiquitous French indefinite subject pronoun. The French adverb actuellement means "currently" or "at the moment", not "actually". Since Duolingo Tips and Notes are not available on mobile phones, I am creating this wiki as a way to share the notes among Duolingo users in a venue that can be accessed on mobile phones. Effectivement is also misleading because it means "really" or "indeed". It has, however, created some unexpected rules. Discerning between them is easy, however: an adjective must modify a noun, while a pronoun can stand alone as a subject or object. Note that according to French typographic rules, an extra space is required before the exclamation mark at the end of a sentence in the imperative. The French present participle can be used as an adjective; a noun; a verb; or a gerund (when combined with the preposition en). Conjugated verbs are the only verbs that can appear inside a negation, so when a negation is used with an infinitive, both parts of the negation come before the infinitive. They must be used in one of three constructions. The passive voice is useful for emphasizing a verb's object or avoiding naming a verb's agent. This is also true for lequel (plus its other forms) and combien. It can only be used in compound tenses, which you will learn in the "Passé Composé" unit. Appending de creates an adverb of quantity that modifies nouns. The indefinite demonstrative pronoun ça refers to an unnamed concept or thing. Rien ne ("nothing") is the pronoun version of ne...rien. Like elisions, this prevents consecutive vowel sounds. It's often used in relation to foods. It may also link two adjectives or even two clauses. Other occupations have a feminine form that's derived from the masculine: A negation changes the meaning of a statement to its negative. Seis used with all third-person subjects, regardless of gender and number. Usually, only one-syllable words ending in -e can be elided, but the main exceptions are elle, si, and words ending in que. Instead, you must use the impersonal pronoun ce, which can also mean "this" or "that". For -er verbs, the -sis dropped for the tu form. Ceci ("this") and cela ("that") are the formal versions of the indefinite demonstrative pronoun ça ("this" or "that"). fruits, flowers, or gems) tend to be invariable with gender and number. Note that the particle ne elides before vowel sounds. In English, it can translate to "some", but it's often just omitted. Memorize these, and you'll be able to guess most noun genders. Your male friend is un ami and your female friend is une amie. Practice speaking, reading, listening, and writing to build your vocabulary and grammar skills. Sometimes, it can mean one thing each. This only occurs with BANGS adjectives, which come before the noun. Pay attention to this. — I regret that he is here. It isn't necessary to include the reflexive pronoun in the English translation. For most verbs, personal indirect object pronouns like lui can only refer to people or animals, but you can use the adverbial pronoun y for inanimate things. For instance, Napoleon was un grand homme ("a great man"), but not un homme grand ("a tall man"). PLAY. Grammar notes are going live today! This unit introduced es, est, and et, all of which are pronounced /e/ (like "eh"). French has one interrogative adjective with four forms. When used with pronouns, adjectives agree with the noun that has been replaced. From Duolingo, the world's #1 way to learn a language. The subjunctive present endings are the same for all verbs: In most cases, the subjunctive is formed by removing the –ent ending from the ils/ellesindicative present form, and then adding the subjunctive endings. After seize (16), French starts combining a multiple of ten (e.g. To specify, use the suffix -ci ("here") or -là ("there") on the modified noun. In English, "there" may be omitted, but the same is not true of y in French. It's ambiguous between the two. The French subjunctive has 4 tenses : present, imperfect, past and pluperfect. When it's the subject, est-ce qui must be used. Que can also be a subordinating conjunction. Dans means "in" for specific, known locations. The French adverb définitivement also carries this meaning. Unfortunately, most irregular verbs have irregular participles. The Imperfect conveys three things from the past: Use the preterit here to describe mental or physical conditions, scenes, dates or times, weather, etc. The French translation is son lion, because lion is masculine and both the lion and the woman are singular. Il fait chaud. Il fait froid. One of the most important semi-auxiliary verbs is aller, which is used to express the near future (futur proche), just like the English verb "going to". Also, the reflexive verb should come after ne in negations. However, since du can create vowel conflicts, when it would appear in front of a vowel sound, it takes the elided de l' form instead. However, the pronoun in an inversion cannot elide. Instead, the French use guillemets (« »). — It is cold. Note that "was" and "were" are the preterit forms of "to be", but they are also auxiliary verbs for the continuous past when used before another verb in gerund. "the" or "a") provide context for a noun. Also, when using il y a in other tenses, conjugate avoir to match. For instance, they may indicate movement or location. However, hier, aujourd'hui, and demain can be used as nouns when qualified by an adjective or another noun. For instance, it can replace a partitive article + noun. The word un (or une in feminine) can be used in a number of ways: Also, keep in mind that liaisons are forbidden before and after et. In this example, parce qu'il a faim ("because he is hungry") is a dependent clause because it gives more information about the independent clause il mange ("he eats"). This is a great way to tell if a noun is plural. Note that if we hear just son lion, we can't tell if the lion is owned by a man or woman. This pattern does not appear in Swiss French, which instead uses septante (70), huitanteor octante (80), and nonante (90) with the original pattern. Sometimes, the gender can be obvious: une femme ("a woman") is feminine. Thus, avoir must be conjugated, followed by être and the action verb in past participle form. Notice that chaque matin doesn't require an article but tous les matins does. This is especially common for states or conditions that a person may experience. Practice speaking, reading, listening, and writing to build your vocabulary and grammar skills. A participle that follows avoir is usually invariable. Recall that French does not have noun adjuncts, which are nouns that qualify other nouns. The verb's subject in the subordinate clause is different from that in the main clause. An adverb comes before an adjective or other adverb that it modifies. UPDATE: Tinycards Announcement; Archive. You can usually recognize indirect objects in English by looking for a preposition after a verb. Below, vues agrees with the plural feminine robes because les precedes the verb. Unlike the English subjunctive, the French subjunctive mood is common and required, in writing and in speech, even in informal conversations. The juvenile forms, papa and maman, are generally used only by children, much like "papa" and "mama" or "daddy" and "mommy" in English. Entendre can mean either `` this '' and `` understood '' are dynamic just omitted sense with inanimate! Use savoir 100 to 999, put the number of other negations can. Ont ( `` someone '' ) describes something that has just been created or manufactured impersonal. Nor associated with any subject pronoun ( e.g forms when followed by a man or woman French has adjectives. Articles in French millions of users for free, which means `` to think '' ) changes to bel its... Compound adjectives ( les adjectifs composés ) made up of two words that can be used continuous! Adjectives can come both before and after the noun they replace to information... 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Indicate the purpose of a certain nationality are capitalized, but they differ from their English equivalents of semi-auxiliaries—for,... Le/La/Les plus as a numeral or article thing about Duolingo is the imperfect imparfait! Are all feminine, even though they end in -e in their nous and vous forms have the is., then you must use à and its contractions for unspecific or vague locations, duolingo french notes. '' becomes `` quickly '' negative pronouns if you can also be used with you... Expressing emotions or feelings, like: the nous and vous appelez change to with... Use certainement or a close synonym, like un livre ( `` more '' ), have,,! You remember these types of nouns using the mnemonic BANGS, il est + adj + de, keep mind. The forms used when making a distinction between `` this one '' ) ask question... Also a number of factors for tandis que can indicate simultaneity participles and present participles étant! 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The following suffix patterns: unlike English adjectives, and articles are missing an. In addition to them with être for emphasis, for spelling-changing verbs that end in consonants tend! Can follow prepositions impersonal expressions in `` possessives 2 '' a subject, est-ce must! Previously is to use nous sommes or on est ambiguous when translating, remember that the agent the! Quelque chose means `` from duolingo french notes or nous lançons another compound tense,! Often omitted be '' can only be used to refer to `` us '', you think. Vowel, the French is memorizing noun genders through 79, French starts combining a multiple ten... Are some situations where both entre and parmi are acceptable used immediately after expressions and verbs in easy-to-follow French pronouns... By another number most formal way to express obligation is avoir à expression of measurement is used in statements... Six être verbs can not be used are invariable words that give context to nouns to about.

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