Download Bonjour! Today we will discuss an extremely important

Bonjour! Today we will discuss an extremely important
topic that you need to know well in order to learn any
foreign language: the parts of speech.
In total, there are nine parts of speech.
Two parts of speech, verbs and nouns/pronouns are
present in every French and English sentence.
1) Verbs (les verbes) are a part of speech that denote (mean) an
action. Words such as to dance, am, have, to sing, eats, am
swimming are verbs. In French, verbs take on many forms.
Different forms of a verb are called conjugations. Depending on
how many people you have, whether you are talking to them or
about them, you will use a different conjugation.
2) Nouns (les noms) denote a person, a place or a thing. Examples of
nouns are cat, Dasha, swimming (as in "Swimming is my
hobby"), New York, table. In French, there is gender of nouns.
All this means is that all nouns can be called either masculine or
feminine.
3) Adjectives (les adjectifs) are words that give more details
(describe, modify) nouns. Adjectives are words such as beautiful,
intelligent, blue, grumpy, cold. In French one adjective can have
different forms if you are talking about a boy or a girl, one person, or
many people.
4) Pronouns (les pronoms) are words that take the place of a noun
in a sentence. Examples of pronouns are he, she, it, we, they, I,
you, them, her. Pronouns in French are very similar in properties
(the way they look and behave) to pronouns in English.
5) Adverbs (les adverbes) are to verbs just like adjectives are to
nouns: they modify (describe) the action that is taking place. In
English, you would say: a canary sings wonderfully. “Wonderfully” is
an adverb. It is different from simply saying “a canary sings”, because
that is not at all specific! In English, adverbs often (but not always!)
have the ending –ly, like in the following examples: beautifully,
annoyingly, joyfully, angrily. However, words like often and
always are adverbs as well. In French, most adverbs have the
ending –ment (absolutely = absolument).
6) Conjunctions (les conjonctions)are words that connect two parts
of a sentence. You can remember their function (job) easily, because
connect and conjunction begin with the same letters. Look at this
example: I am nice, but annoying. The word but makes the sentence
more understandable. The phrase “I am nice, annoying” would
definitely be more difficult to read, and its meaning would be harder
to recognize. Examples of conjunctions in English are and, but, by,
yet, so, of.
7) Prepositions (les prépositions) signify (mean) the location of an
object (a noun or a pronoun). These are very simple to memorize in
French. Some examples of prepositions are inside, to, on, under,
next to, behind, in front of.
8) Interjections (les interjections) are words that express emotion
or conditions (feelings), such as ouch, wow, darn, oh. They are the
words that you usually say, but do not write down. “Bad words”
(swear words, curse words) are also interjections. You do not need to
know these words to speak French perfectly, but to learn the language
like all native speakers (those who know French as their first
language) you should be familiar with them. Even words that are as
simple as ow! are different in French.
9) Numerals (les adjectifs numéraux) are words that denote
numbers, such as one, nine, fifth, eighty-three.
* An important part of the French and English languages is the article
(l’article). Articles are words like the, an, a – in English, there are only
those three! Some people consider articles a part of speech, but others do
not, because they do not have any meaning – try to explain what “the”
means! Some languages, such as Russian, do not even have articles.
Des exercices
Identify the following parts of speech.
One ________________________________________________
Endless ______________________________________________
Oh _________________________________________________
To eat _______________________________________________
Merrily ______________________________________________
Beautiful _____________________________________________
Cat _________________________________________________
In __________________________________________________
Although _____________________________________________
King ________________________________________________
Mona Lisa ____________________________________________
Running _____________________________________________
Is __________________________________________________
Provide examples of the following parts of speech.
Verb ________________________________________________
Noun _______________________________________________
Interjection ___________________________________________
Numeral _____________________________________________
Conjunction ___________________________________________
Adverb ______________________________________________
Preposition ___________________________________________
Adjective _____________________________________________
Pronoun _____________________________________________