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French Tenses | ||
Tags: Verbs/Conjugation | French | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Elof23 Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4636 days ago 9 posts - 10 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, French, Russian, Portuguese, Norwegian, Thai | Message 1 of 7 21 March 2012 at 2:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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I did a search but I couldn't find a thread any later than 2006 even though this must be a common question for beginners.
In short, which tenses should one learn first? My vocabulary is quite good but in terms of grammar I am awful and it's really time to rectify this! My plan was to start with 10 common verbs Etre, avoir, faire, dire, aller, voir, savoir, pouvoir, falloir and vouloir ... and then write out multiple sentences in the following tenses, Present, passe compose, imperfect, futur proche, future simple and conditionel. Would that be a good start? Thanks. Edited by Elof23 on 21 March 2012 at 2:48pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| vermillon Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4679 days ago 602 posts - 1042 votes  Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, German | Message 2 of 7 21 March 2012 at 2:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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The verbs you mentioned are obviously the most irregular you can find in French, precisely because they're very common. I'd advise you take some verb from the 1st group (regular verbs in -er, i.e. about any -er verb but not "aller"): they all conjugate the same way, so you'll get a nice reward for learning how to conjugate them. Same can be said of the 2nd group.
The most natural tenses to learn are in the indicative mood and should be: present, passé composé (the easiest tense for the past, as it's like present perfect in English, you just need to conjugate avoir and être), imperfect or future (in that order). Then other tenses can come later, probably, but a few "forms" should be learnt for a few verbs: "je voudrais" (I would like) and things like that, which don't require that you learn the full conjugation table, but just the few ones you're ever going to need at a beginner stage. Good luck! 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Elof23 Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4636 days ago 9 posts - 10 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, French, Russian, Portuguese, Norwegian, Thai | Message 3 of 7 21 March 2012 at 3:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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So you think to start with I should stick to four tenses,
Present, Passe Compose, Imperfect and Futur Simple? I have added Manifester, Tuer and Parler to my verb list as well as Punir. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Majka Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic kofoholici.wordpress Joined 4658 days ago 307 posts - 755 votes Speaks: Czech*, German, English Studies: French Studies: Russian | Message 4 of 7 21 March 2012 at 6:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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I would recommend following steps:
1. go back to basics. Learn really, really well conjugation in present of être, avoir and aller. You really need to know these in your sleep :) 2. learn past participle. Now you have: passé composé (avoir or être - in some cases - with the PP), futur proche (aller + infinitiv) and passive voice (être + PP), and even some adjectives. 3. learn to use these well. In simple spoken language you have now all: past, present and future. 4. add imperfect, again, learn the forms for avoir and être especially well. 5. at the same time, you can add futur simple. The form isn't difficult. 6. read through grammar, how to build all the non-literary tenses. Notice the tenses you could form at this time (quite a few). Learn how to "build" the remaining ones. Simple knowledge how to do it is all you need now. 7. Get Michel Thomas (advanced) or at least the transcript. Failing that, look at http://french.about.com/od/grammar/a/verbtranslations.htm - you need to learn when to use which tense. 8. When reading, notice the tenses. I have just made graded reader from Bible for myself (the thread with the recommended sequence was here in forum) for LR. I have interlinear version (French, French lemmatised and Czech), with annotations just for the verb forms in original text. It does help immensely, but you can do the same with a simple marker in any text. 9. leave the literal tenses last, but learn to see them in text. I would learn the basics (step 1-3 or 1-5 for avoir, être and all regular verbs (-er, -ir, -re verbs) before starting with other irregulars. Add then all your 10 verbs from your initial post. Go through all the steps 1-5 for these verbs. Learn others irregular verbs only when you really need them, one at time. Edit: Hopefully more exact explanation of the tenses in point 2. I took it for granted, but it could be slightly misleading for a beginner. Edited by Majka on 22 March 2012 at 2:50pm 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5533 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 7 21 March 2012 at 6:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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I agree with Majka: Nail down the present tenses of être, avoir,
aller and the regular -er, -ir and -re verbs, in that order, and learn the passé composé and futur proche. Keep an eye out for the common irregular past participles ("J'ai lu un livre", for example). Pick up the other irregular verbs as you need them. Then learn the imperfect of avoir and être, because those are everywhere, and start picking up a few useful verb forms in the conditional ("je voudrais"). This was enough to get me through daily conversation for quite a while. :-) After that, go for the conditional, the simple future and the imperfect. The conditional and the future use the same stems, and the conditional and the imperfect use the same endings. These tenses do crop up in day-to-day conversation, so it's good to recognize them. The subjunctive is less regular and slightly less common. And eventually you'll need to recognize the passé simple, especially in the third person. Beyond that, I have no idea what to learn next, because I haven't managed to notice it yet. :-) Edited by emk on 21 March 2012 at 6:54pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Elof23 Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4636 days ago 9 posts - 10 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, French, Russian, Portuguese, Norwegian, Thai | Message 6 of 7 22 March 2012 at 7:20am | IP Logged | ||
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Thankyou very much. I will let you know how it goes.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4708 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 7 of 7 22 March 2012 at 12:26pm | IP Logged | ||
The futur proche does not require the past particple of a verb to be used. It instead uses the infinitive. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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