This Monday morning at the Modern Language School, Brian, Chris, Gary, Julie, Louise, Steven and Sue (Janet was away in France, probably practising her verbs on her neighbours), were joking their way through the verbs revision and showing great confidence and ability.

Here are some of the verbs we played with:

And yes, it’s true, the group worked hard and enjoyed a good laugh. 🙂

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Ou, sans accent, veut dire “or” mais où, avec accent veut dire where.

My cat Eyera has kindly agreed to demonstrate for us:

• Elle hésite: Plus près de la fenêtre, au soleil, ou plus près du radiateur ?
• Finalement, elle est très bien où elle se trouve.

What’s the point if you can’t hear any difference anyway? You tell me. But try and remember how annoying it is when you read things like “Theirs a bee in your bonnet”.

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Plural

The French section of the Modern Language School reminds you: Just as in English the plural of mouse is mice, in French the plural of journal is journaux.

I will give one of my amazing prizes to each of  the 2 students who post on our Facebook page the nicest (unusual, imaginative, shocking, silly, etc.) sentence, using some of these words in the plural.

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It’s the grammar name for words like my, your, his, her, our, their. With these, though it does not come naturally to English speakers, the word for my, etc. agrees (gender and number) with the thing or person “owned”, i.e. the word that comes after. So if you want to say “my dress”, it’s “ma robe”; “my jumper” is “mon pull” and “my shoes” is “mes chaussures”, whether you are a (cross-dressing) man or a woman.

Depending on whether you say “tu” or “vous” to someone, the “your” will be different. Say you are talking to your best friend (a definite “tu”), we’ll have “ta sœur”, “ton frère”, “tes enfants”.

But if you are meeting an adult for the first time, you will be using “vous” and asking about “votre sœur”, “votre frère”, “vos enfants”.

However, it gets better after “my” and “your”, as there are only 2 French words each for “our” and “their”:

our house: notre maison; our village: notre village; our keys: nos clés

their mouse: leur souris; their dog: leur chien; their cats: leurs chats

The bitter-sweet one is that the French words for his and her are the same; so you only have 3 words to learn but you will only know from context whether someone is talking about his coat or her coat: “son manteau”. It is important, then, to hold on firmly to the idea that the his / her word agrees with the “owned” thing or person:

his mother: sa mère; her mother: sa mère

his father: son père; her father: son père

his parents: ses parents; her parents: ses parents

Finally, there is one anomaly with the above: if the word for the “owned” thing or person starts with a vowel or an “h”, then we use the masculine adjective (mon, ton, son) for any word in the singular:

my (male) friend: mon ami (m.); my (female) friend: mon amie (f.)

your plate: ton assiette (f.)

his / her address: son adresse (f.)

These little possessive adjectives have quite a bit of power. For example in today’s class, Steven was sitting between Tony and Sue and said “mon chéri”, so everyone thought something was going on between him and Tony. But he quickly realised his error and changed to “ma chérie”, referring to Sue who happens to be his wife.

To practise and test yourself on possessive adjectives, why not click on the link to my video: https://youtu.be/cVTbV0sYB5I .

Also, you can practise with a toungue twister: “Ton thé t’a-t-il ôté ta toux?” (Did your tea get rid of your cough?).

A votre service,

Dom

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