French

Bienvenue is the most common way to say welcome. Used alone, as a greeting, it is always feminine (with an -e at the end). But, used as an adjective or noun, it can be ,asculin bienvenu, or feminine bienvenue. In French, adjectives change endings based on someone’s gender. -e = one female, -es = several females, when most of the words ending with a consonant are masculine. But, when French people speak, they generally don’t pronounce the last letter. So, in the case of bienvenu(e), there is no difference of pronunciation between the femine and the masculin forms.

French speakers use two different subjects for the informal (tu) and polite (vous) translation of you. The end of the verb also changes depending on the subject (tu peux m’aider ?, vous pouvez m’aider ?).
Moreover, for yes/no questions, you don’t need do as it is implied in the question mark and the inflection of the speaker’s voice. There are several ways to ask something simple in French, but this one (subject + verb + complement ?) might be the simplest.
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This is the polite way to ask for someone’s help. First, Julie uses the subject vous to speak to the barista because she doesn’t know her. For a more information conversation, people use tu : “tu peux m’aider” or “aide–moi“, generally followed by “s’il te plaît”. Note that the verb is changing form depending on the subject. To ask someone politely, French also uses the condition “je voudrais” instead of the present “je veuz“.

French uses the verb aimer to say like or love. To emphasize it, like in I like it a lot/very much, they often use the verb adorer. Adorer and aimer are regular verbs from the fist groupe (that end with -er). The conjugation is very simple.

In French, the negation is composed of two words, here ne and pas, placed before and after the verb. Ne is always before the verb (when you write), while the second part changes. For example: rien = nothing and jamais = never. But, when people speak, they often skip the first part ne and pronounce only the second part (pas, rien, jamais, etc.).

You might have noticed that the word anglais is not in capitalized. That’s because French language makes the difference between the language and the adjectives – “Je parle français” (“I speak French“), “J’ai un livre français” (“I have a French book” – and the people/nationality – “Je suis Français“.

The subject Je, like a lot of other words (for example ne) is written and pronounced differently depending on the first letter of the following word. If it begins with a consonant, you say/writeje, but when it begins with a vowel, you say/write j’. For example, “Je parle“/”J’aime.

The verb Avoir is very useful, but also irregular. Try to memorize the conjugation. You will need it very often.

S’appeler is a reflexive verb, which may cause some confusion for new French learners. The direct translation of “Je m’appelle Julie” is “I call myself Julie“. It might seem weird, but it’s a common way to introduce yourself and others. Let’s see how reflexive verbs are conjugated.

For an informal conversation, the most common way to ask someone “How are you?” is “Comment ça va?” (literally: “How it is?”), and the common answer is “ça va“. For a more formal exchange, French would generally use the question “Comment allez–vous?”, and the typical answer would be “Je vais bien, merci” or just “Très bien, merci. Et vous ?”

The verb être is very irregular, so it is important to memorize it. Here is the conjugation:

In French, people don’t visit someone, they literally “return a visit to someone“, which is said “rendre visite à quelqu’un“. But, they visit things: “Je visite une maison” (“I visit a house“). Rendre is also a different kind of verb than the ones seen previously. Let’s see how it is conjugated in the present tense:

Here is another irregular verb that is very common and useful. Let’s see its conjugation:

“Il y a” is a fix verbal form that means there is/there are. It doesn’t change depending on gender or number, so it is a very easy way to communicate a lot of information. It is generally used to make decisions.

In French, the noun an(s) is mandatory when you give someone’s age. The informal question “Tu as quel âge ?”, and the formal way of asking is “Quel âge avez–vous ?”.

In French, the gender and number of a possessive depends on the gender/number of the object possessed. For example, when Thomas speaks about his sister, he says “ma soeur“, but for his brother, he would use “mon frère”, and for his brothers, “mes frères”.

Here, the verbal form il y a is totally different than in the pervious examples. It also means ago, and it is placed before the time you want to mention.

In French, we is officially translated by nous, but in informal conversations, it is more common to use on. The conjugation of on is singluar and it’s the same for il/elle.

Contrary to the legend, people don’t use garçon” (at least not anymore) to call a waiter, but they say “Excusez–moi” to attract attention, or they just raise their hand.