Download Contents - Galore Park

Skeleton French Body copy
2/9/04
1:30 PM
Page v
Contents
Part One: The Bare Bones
1. A sentence: What is it and how does it work?
2
2. Nouns: Male or female? One, or more than one?
4
3. Articles: How to say ‘the’, ‘a’, ‘an’ and ‘some’
6
4. Adjectives: Great! cool! wicked!
8
5. The present tense: ‘I’m doing it now!’
11
6. The future tense: ‘I’m going to …’
16
7. Accents: Be ‘acute’: avoid ‘grave’ mistakes!
17
8. The past tense: ‘I’ve done it!’
19
9. Question time: Who? Where? When? How? What? How many?
Why? How long? How much? Which?
22
10. Negatives: It’s not a problem!
24
11. Prepositions: From me to you!
25
12. Pronouns: French Grammar? It’s easy!
29
Part Two: Body Building
13. More squiggles: The ‘fish hook’ and the ‘two funny dots’ : what are they for?
32
14. Masculine or feminine?: More tips about the gender of nouns
34
15. Adjectives: Before or after the noun? More about agreements, and how to make
comparisons
39
16. More adjectives: Demonstrative and possessive adjectives: this book is my property!
45
17. Adverbs: Understand French grammar easily!
48
18. Reflexive verbs: Help yourself!
50
19. More about the present tense: More about verbs, regular and irregular
52
20. More about the future tense: It will be easy!
57
21. More about the perfect tense: Past participles
60
22. Still more about the perfect tense!: Verbs that take être
62
23. The imperfect tense: Why another past tense?
65
24. More about questions: Are there other ways to ask them?
67
25. More about negatives: ‘Never’, ‘nobody’, ‘no more’, ‘nothing’ and ‘only’
71
26. More about pronouns: A host of new pronouns
73
Practice Exercises
79
Skeleton Key: Answers to the exercises
109
Skeleton French Body copy
2/9/04
1:30 PM
Page 1
Part One: The Bare Bones
1
Skeleton French Body copy
2/9/04
1:30 PM
Page 2
Skeleton French
Chapter 1:
CD
1
A sentence
What is it and how does it work?
A sentence is a group of words working together,
like people in an organisation. Some have more
responsibility than others. The two main kinds
of words are verbs and nouns.
Verbs
Verbs say what ‘happens’ or what ‘is’; they are
‘doing’ or ‘being’ words.
Examples:
manger
dormir
travailler
avoir
to eat
to sleep
to work
to have
aller
parler
exister
devenir
to go
to speak
to exist
to become
For a sentence to be a sentence, it must always contain a verb.
☺ As in English, a pause in a sentence is shown by a comma (,). The end of a sentence is shown
by a full stop (.), an exclamation mark (!) or a question mark (?). The first word of a sentence
starts with a capital letter.
Examples:
Vous avez soif?
Voulez-vous un café, ou un thé?
Moi, j’aime mieux le coca.
CD
2
Are you thirsty?
Do you want a coffee, or a tea?
I prefer Coke myself.
Nouns
Nouns are the names of things, animals, people and places.
Examples:
chaise
girafe
directeur
Londres
chair
giraffe
headmaster
London
magasin
moustique
oncle
shop
mosquito
uncle
Nouns written with a capital letter are called proper nouns.
Examples:
Marie
Paris
2
Mary
Paris
Frédéric
Alpes
Frederic
Alps
Skeleton French Body copy
2/9/04
1:30 PM
Page 3
Chapter 1
☺ Words that are proper nouns in English are nearly always proper nouns in French as well. There
are a small number of exceptions, such as the names of days, months and languages, which do
not begin with a capital letter.
CD
3
And you call this
a proper noun!
Examples:
mardi
mai
le français
Tuesday
May
French (language)
Practice 1.1
Other parts of speech
A noun is often accompanied by:
(i) an article (to act as its bodyguard):
Examples:
le, la
the
un, une a
(ii) a preposition (to introduce it):
Examples:
après after
avec
with
dans
à
in
at/to
(iii) an adjective (to describe it):
Examples:
grand big
bleu
blue
vieux
notre
old
our
A noun can be replaced by a pronoun (to avoid repetition):
Examples:
il
he
vous
you
les
them
You can use a conjunction (to link ideas):
Examples:
et
and
mais
but
ou
The village is called Gilly. It is small and
normally quiet. It is situated on the A6,
before Albertville.
or
A verb or an adjective can be accompanied by an
adverb (to describe it):
Examples:
facilement
Practice 1.1 to 1.4
easily
bien
These parts can work together to form
a sentence:
Le village s’appelle Gilly. Il est petit et
normalement calme. Il est situé sur la
Nationale 6, avant Albertville.
well
s’appelle, est, est situé are verbs;
village is a noun;
Gilly, Nationale 6, Albertville are proper
nouns;
le, la are articles;
sur, avant are prepositions;
petit, calme are adjectives;
il is a pronoun;
et is a conjunction;
normalement is an adverb.
3
Skeleton French Body copy
2/9/04
1:30 PM
Page 4
Skeleton French
Chapter 2:
CD
4
Nouns
Male or female? One, or more than one?
A noun is the name of a thing, animal, person or place (see Chapter 1, page 2). In French, all
nouns are either male (masculine) or female (feminine). Masculine and feminine refer to the
gender of a noun. This also happens in other languages which, like French, have come from Latin.
It explains why, in Spanish and Italian, nouns have mostly the same genders as in French.
English has masculine and feminine for living creatures, and all other nouns are neuter (‘it’) although sailors refer to their boats as ‘she’. French has no neuter: everything is a ‘he’ or a ‘she’.
Even the French can’t always know for sure whether a noun is masculine or feminine. With a word
they have not seen before, they make it masculine or feminine according to the gender of words
with which it rhymes. That works well most of the time, but sometimes even they make mistakes!
Examples:
Feminine
Feminine
so:
bague
vague
blague
ring
wave
joke
is likely to be feminine too (and it is!).
Of course, the best way of knowing for certain is to check in a dictionary.
Masculine or feminine?
One thing is easy: a noun is almost certainly masculine if it ends with a consonant, except if the
consonant is in the ending ‘–ion’, in which case it is almost certainly feminine.
Le mot chemise est féminin et
chemisier masculin. Pourquoi?
The word ‘shirt’ is feminine and
‘blouse’ masculine. Why?
Examples:
Masculine
4
le championnat
le match
le Portugal
un joueur
un ballon
the championship
the match
Portugal
a player
a football
Feminine
la division
the division
une compétition a competition
but Masculine un avion
un champion
an aeroplane
a champion
However, the gender of nouns ending in a vowel is not always so predictable! To find out more
about genders, see Chapter 14, page 34.
Practice 2.1
Skeleton French Body copy
2/9/04
1:30 PM
Page 5
Chapter 2
CD
5
Singular or plural?
Singular refers to ‘one’, plural refers to ‘more than one’. In French as in English, to show there is
more than one noun, you normally add an ‘s’ on the end of the noun, but in French, the ‘s’ is not
normally heard.
Examples:
Singular
un croissant
une limonade
le biscuit
a croissant
a lemonade
the biscuit
Plural
des croissants
deux limonades
les biscuits
(some) croissants
two lemonades
the biscuits
Practice 2.2
All aboard! One mouse or two
mouses? One sheep or two sheeps?
One horse or two horses?
One child or two childs?
Unusual plural endings
Noé: Tous à bord! Une souris ou deux souris? Un
mouton ou deux moutons? Un cheval ou
deux chevaux? Un enfant ou deux enfants?
CD
6
Some words in French, just as in English, have a
different ending when they are plural. So, just as
‘mouse’ becomes ‘mice’, ‘sheep’ stays as ‘sheep’,
and ‘child’ becomes ‘children’, the plural form of
some French words just has to be learnt.
Most nouns ending in ‘–al’ change to ‘–aux’
Most nouns ending in ‘–au’ and ‘–eu’ add ‘–x’ instead of ‘-s’
☺ Good news! Nouns ending in ‘–s’ or ‘–z’ do not
change when they are plural
Examples:
Singular
une souris
un nez
le journal
un cadeau
le jeu
a mouse
a nose
the newspaper
a gift
the game
Plural
cent souris
cent nez
les journaux
dix cadeaux
les jeux
one hundred mice
one hundred noses
the newspapers
ten gifts
the games
Practice 2.3
Unusual pronunciations
Some nouns seem to have a mind (or a pronunciation) of their own!
Examples:
Singular
un_œuf (rhymes with neuf = nine)
un bœuf (as above)
an egg
an ox
Plural
des_œufs (rhymes with deux = two)
des bœufs (as above)
It is rather like: ‘one woman’ – ‘two women’ in English! Notice that we sometimes put an
‘underscore’ mark to show that two words run together (e.g. des_oeufs)
Why did the French waiter say: ‘Deux oeufs? Non, désolé?’
Because un oeuf is enough!
5