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Download October 2010 Grammar Corner: French Pronouns
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October 2010 Grammar Corner: French Pronouns Think French Grammar Corner is brought to you by Camille Chevalier-Karfis. Camille has been teaching adults in private and group classes for over 15 years. After years of observing her students struggle with existing teaching methods, Camille developed her own French method geared towards adult speakers. To complement this unique teaching approach, Camille has written two audio books and has created more than 60 hours of French audio training material. All of Camille’s audio books, podcasts, audio lessons can be found on her site www.FrenchToday.com. Camille is also available for private lessons worldwide via phone or Skype. A pronoun is a small word which replaces a noun. Today, we’ll look at stress pronouns and object pronouns, which are the ones that confuse learners of French the most. 1 - How to pick the right pronoun? First, you have to figure out the grammatical value of the word you want to replace. For example ; Tina regarde la télévision. Qui regarde ? Tina regarde. Tina est le sujet. Therefore, I will choose a subject pronoun to replace Tina. The list of subject pronoun is: Je, tu, il, elle, on, nous, vous, ils, elles. This is often the biggest problem Americans face when dealing with pronouns. They don’t know how to figure out the grammatical value of the noun they want to replace. To solve this problem, I strongly suggest you get this book, available on Amazon: English Grammar for Students of French: The Study Guide for Those Learning French. 2- Stress pronouns They are used after c’est, alone (as in pointing to someone to say “him”, or raising your hand to get picked), and before and after prepositions - c’est moi. Avec toi. Lui et moi. - Moi, moi !! (Shouting it out to get picked to sing with.) The list is moi, toi, LUI, ELLE, nous, vous EUX ELLES Note that in stress pronouns, LUI is used only for MASCULINE singular and also learn the plural masculine EUX - pronounced like jE 3 - Direct and indirect object pronouns To find out the COD (complement d’objet direct) and the COI (complement d’objet indirect) it is essential that you ask your grammatical questions IN FRENCH. the problem with these is that English may take a COI where French takes a COD... your grammar questions are: subject + verb + qui/quoi ? = COD subject + verb + à qui = COI The COI is always a person The COD may be a thing or a person Tina donne les fleurs à Paul Tina donne quoi ? Les fleurs = COD Tina donne à qui ? à Paul = COI Think French - Octobre 2010 The list of COD pronouns is: me, te, le/la, nous, vous, les (note me, te, le/la become m’, t’, l’ + vowel or h) The list of COI pronouns is: me, te, LUI, nous, vous, leur (note they become me and te become m’ or t’ + vowel or h) So, for a COI, lui means him AND her. Note that for both object groups, me, te, nous, vous are the same. So the pronoun only change between le/la/l’ or lui and les or leur. Pronouns usually go right before the CONJUGATED verb, or the “pas” in the negative je la regarde je l’ai regardée je ne la regarde pas A LOT OF verb take direct object pronouns. ONLY A FEW VERBS take indirect object pronouns ; acheter à, emprunter à (to borrow), prêter à (to lend) offrir à, rendre à, donner à, vendre à, parler à, demander à, dire à, telephoner à, ecrire à, sourire à, repondre à, souhaiter à, envoyer à, laisser à, présenter à, servir à, raconter à... So the best thing to do is to dill with this verbs and lui and leur... je lui téléphone, nous leur vendons.... Je connais Martine = je connais qui ? Martine COD feminine singular Je la connais for feminine singular, your “choice” of object pronoun is between “la, l’” or “lui” but it is never “elle”, so it will never be “je elle connais” or “je connais elle”. Same goes for masuline : you choice is “le, l’ or lui”, never il. You also need to be careful about your liaisons with nous, vous, les. ma mère arrose les fleurs le soir ma mère arrose quoi ? ma mère arrose les fleurs - femine, plural. COD ma mère les Zarrose le soir 4 - What is really confusing Now, you see that pronouns are confusing, because the same words have different values. NOUS and VOUS are the form for almost all pronouns: subject, stress, object, reflexive... LUI can mean “for/with/by - HIM - masculine singular ONLY when it is a stress pronoun - AND him or her when it is an indirect object pronoun. LEUR means them, but it’s also the form of the possessive adjective “their”; voici leur maison. LE, LA, L’, LES, les are direct object pronouns AND definite articles meaning the. www.thinkfrench.com