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Spanky’s Romulan 18 months of French

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Spanky
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 5956 days ago

1021 posts - 1714 votes 
Studies: French

 
 Message 41 of 119
07 September 2012 at 7:13pm | IP Logged 
french.about.com - Introduction to French Verbs

Welcome to the nightmare of les verbes

Wherein one learns that there are up to six verb forms or conjugations for each French verb even in the straightforward present tense, one for each grammatical person, compared to only two present tense conjugations in English (yet another reason why English totally rocks over French, but I digress…)

In terms of conjugation, one can (and apparently does) divide French verbs into the following categories

- Regular verbs (-ER, -IR, -RE)
- Stem-changing verbs (subversive –ER verbs, with a snaky French twist)
- Irregular verbs (including, helpfully, the 10 most common French verbs)

Just because there is no point in making things too straightforward: spread across these three categories may be verbs from the following two categories (which FAC indicates require “additional particularity” – AKA French fussiness):

- Pronominal verbs (including reflexive verbs)
- Impersonal verbs

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Spanky
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 5956 days ago

1021 posts - 1714 votes 
Studies: French

 
 Message 42 of 119
07 September 2012 at 7:21pm | IP Logged 
Conjugation

conjugation

Conjugation is some sort of tricky interplay between the following:

Person (first, second or third person – easy-peasy)

Number (singular or plural)

Just to screw up something straightforward, you must use the second person plural as a polite way to refer to a second person singular, and also you can use the third person singular “on” in place of the first person plural “nous” – nope, I am not making this madness up)

Tense (at least 8 of them – yes I agree, any well-designed system only needs three)

Mood (6 different ones)

Voice (3 different ones).

The idea seems to be to pick one option from each of the above five categories, apply magic and then spit out the correctly conjugated form of the verb.


Edited by Spanky on 07 September 2012 at 7:23pm

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Spanky
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 5956 days ago

1021 posts - 1714 votes 
Studies: French

 
 Message 43 of 119
10 September 2012 at 4:12pm | IP Logged 
Person

Subject pronouns

Very basic review, with a bonus test after seven pages (got 117%, just saying). Mining
the sample sentences for Anki.

Tu v. vous, article (p. 3 of the above) and tu v. vous bonus quiz.

tu
v. vous quiz


Also a link to a separate article on the negotiation of appropriate tu v. vous pronoun:
on peut se
tutoyer


page 5 of subject pronoun article – « on » - we, they, one, someone, people in general
- whether agreement required or not required with subject pronoun implied by use or
“on” - apparently the French have not yet decided.

ie. “on est content” – apparently agreement is optional, so where “on” is
a reference to singular v. plural, feminine, etc, agreement may or may not occur (on
est contents, on est contentes
, etc).   Same for adjectives and etre verbs (ie.
on est tombé v. on est tombées
)


Edited by Spanky on 10 September 2012 at 4:42pm

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Spanky
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 5956 days ago

1021 posts - 1714 votes 
Studies: French

 
 Message 44 of 119
10 September 2012 at 4:21pm | IP Logged 
tense (temps)

Describes the “when” of a verb

Verbal tense (temps)

présent
passé simple
             simple past, preterite (whatever that is)
passé composé      present perfect
plus-que-parfait   past perfect
passé antérieur    past anterior
imparfait         imperfect
futur    
futur antérieur    future anterior

Edited by Spanky on 10 September 2012 at 4:24pm

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Spanky
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 5956 days ago

1021 posts - 1714 votes 
Studies: French

 
 Message 45 of 119
10 September 2012 at 4:37pm | IP Logged 
Mood (mode
Describes the attitude of the speaker toward the verb – is the action of the verb true,
certain, possibility, command, etc.

Verbal mood

Six moods, divided between personal and impersonal moods (ou modes personnels et
modes impersonnels
)

modes personnels

indicative
(indicative)
subjonctif (subjunctive)
conditionnel (conditional)
impératif (imperative)

modes impersonnels

participe
(participle)
infinitif (infinitive)


Edited by Spanky on 10 September 2012 at 4:40pm

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Spanky
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 5956 days ago

1021 posts - 1714 votes 
Studies: French

 
 Message 46 of 119
12 September 2012 at 7:45am | IP Logged 
Voice (la voix)

Voice - general

- actif - subject performs the action of the verb
- passif - action of the verb is performed on the subject by an agent
- pronominal - subject performs the action of the verb on itself

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Spanky
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 5956 days ago

1021 posts - 1714 votes 
Studies: French

 
 Message 47 of 119
12 September 2012 at 8:01am | IP Logged 
French for "shirt", just because I got it wrong earlier today (thought it was
chemin)

wordreference - "shirt" en français

une chemise - a man's shirt (feminine noun)
un chemisier - a woman's shirt (masculine noun)

(some grammarian apparently has an odd sense of humour)


du calme! - keep your shirt on!

laisser jusqu'à sa dernière chemise - to lose one's shirt

vendre père et mère - to sell the shirt off one's back

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Spanky
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 5956 days ago

1021 posts - 1714 votes 
Studies: French

 
 Message 48 of 119
12 September 2012 at 8:26am | IP Logged 
regular -ER verbs

FAC - regular -ER verbs -
present indicative conjugation


most common -ER verbs,
plus watch out for -GER and -CER and -IER





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