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French Adjectives 1

mont-st-michel

It’s really important to master well the French adjectives as they are a lot different from the English ones for example. The French adjectives reflect the gender and the number of the noun(s) they describe. The French adjective can be either masculine, feminine, singular or plural. It seems like a lot but it is not that hard. Besides there are some simple rules that apply and the truth is that even the French sometimes confuse the correct forms of their adjectives. Here are the rules:

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French Nationalities

Knowing the names of different nationalities (les nationalités) will not only allow you to tell something about yourself but also it will help you to get to know better the person you are talking to, especially if he/she is a foreigner.

Things to remember:

  • As with majority of the French adjectives, there is a masculine and feminine form for most of the names of nationalities. All you need to do is to add an “-e” to the masculine form.  Eg. français / française
    • Most of the time it will change the pronunciation  français / française (z) but there are some exceptions where it stays the same: Eg. espagnol / espagnole
    • If the name of the adjective of nationality ends with “-e”, the word stays the same. Eg. Paul est suisse. / Marie est suisse. 
  • The names of nationalities in French are written in small letters, unlike in the English language !

Names of Nationalities in French: 

French French feminine English
français française French
anglais anglaise English
sénégalais sénégalaise Senegalese
marocain marocaine Moroccan
allemand allemande German
russe russe Russian
américain américaine American
espagnol espagnole Spanish
suédois suédoise Swedish
britannique britannique British
écossaise écossaise Scottish

Names of the Countries

You may also want to learn the names of the countries in French that go with the names of these nationalities. Have a look at this lesson. 

Exercise 1

Exercise 2

Exercise 3

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Speak in French About the Past with Passé Composé

Citroën 2CV, a legendary French car

In French there are four ways of expressing the past: le passé composé, l’imparfait, le plus-que-parfait et le passé simple. The first two you will use quite often, the third one from time to time, and the last one you won’t use at all. That’s the beauty of the French language.

Let’s start with the most famous and frequent French tense of the past:

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11 Things You Didn’t Know About the French Language

11 things about the French language (and France) that you might not have known before reading this article. Some of them can be quite surprising. Enjoy and comment if you have anything to add. Thank You !

  1. French is the only language, along with English, spoken on all five continents
  2. The influence of the French language is to be found in Harry Potter books: Voldemort ? Vol-de-mort ? Joanne K. Rowling studied French at the University of Exeter and also  studied for a year in Paris.
  3. France is the third most attractive country for foreign students, after United States and the United Kingdom. In this way, France is also the first among non English speaking countries to welcome the biggest numbers of international students.
  4. France is also the world’s number one tourist destination.
    Paris Eiffel Tower
    France Provence
    France lavender
  5. French people are really good at mathematics. René Descartes, Blaise Pascal, Pierre de Fermat, to only name some of the most famous ones of the past. Nowadays, France is the second after the United States to have the highest number of the recipients of the Fields medal (also known as the “Nobel Prize” in Mathematics, it is also considered the highest honor a mathematician can receive). Mathematics are also highly valued in French education in general and there are many outstanding institutions offering studying maths. Is it because of the French language ?
  6. Did you know that these people speak French fluently ? Tony Blair, the former British Prime Minister, Queen Elizabeth 2, Nick Clegg, the former UK Vice-Prime Minister, John Kerry, the US Secretary of State. There is also Prince William but his French is a bit rough. And there is the American actor Bradley Cooper who can speak quite well.
  7. French is the language of philosophy: Pascal, Voltaire, Descartes, Sartre and Derrida were all famous French philosophers. It is the only country in Europe (correct me if I’m wrong) where philosophy makes up an integral part of the high-school education system.
  8. Knowing French will also make it possible for you to communicate in half of the African continent. It will certainly make your stays in Morocco, Algeria or Tunisia a lot easier and more interesting. Take a look at this Wikipedia article about African French. Francophone_Africa
  9. It is the third most used language for business after English and Chinese.
  10. The French language is one of the three working languages of the European Commission. The other two are English and German.
  11. The French counting system in France is partially vigesimal, which means the base of 20, that used to be common in the Middle Ages. That’s why in French the term for 70 is soixante-dix (3 times 20 plus 10), for 80 is quatre-vingts (4 times 20) and 90 is quatre-vingts-dix (4 times 20 plus 10).

If you feel like adding to the list, don’t hesitate to give your ideas in the comment section. Thanks !

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etre / avoir simple translation exercise

After you have done the être/avoir conjugation exercise, you may try something more difficult. You need to translate some parts of the sentences from the previous exercise back into French. This is one of the best exercises to make you memory really work and stick those sentences well in you memory ! Try as many times as you need to score 100% in one go. Good luck !

Paris by night
Metro Paris
Paris by night by mustang joe, flickr