The Four Seasons

Spring----printemps (prahn tan)
Summer----ete (ay tay)
Fall----automne (otohn)
Winter----hiver (eevehr)

Relations

Father-----Le pere (luh pehr)
Mother----La mere (lah mehr)
Children----Les enfants (leh zahn fahn)
Son----Le fils (luh fees)
Daughter----La fille (lah feeay)
Sister----La souer (lah suhr)
Husband----Le mari (luh mah ree)
Wife----La femme (lah fahm)

Days and Nights

Day is jour (Pronounced as jhoor)
Mid day is midi (pronounced as meedee)
Night is nuit (pronounced as nwee)
Nidnight is minuit (pronounced as mee nwee)

Need

Now let me tell the reason why the avoir conjugations should be memorized really well. You are in a French speaking country and you are lost and you need something….

“Need” is an important verb according to me, and unfortunately it’s not that easy in French.

Need is avoir + besoin + de in French ( pronounced as avwar buhzwan duh)

Thus if u need something you can say

Je ai besoin duh xxxx ( Pronounced as zhay buhzwan duh xxxxx) ..I need xxx

Avoir

This word is pronounced as avwar and its English meaning is “to have”. This is one of the most complex words I have come across while picking up my extremely limited French vocabulary. This verb takes the following forms with the various pronouns

Je ai ( Pronounced as zhay) ---- I have
Il/ Elle a ( pronounced as eel/ehl ah) ---- He/she has
Nous avons (pronounced as noo zavohn) ---- We have
Vous avez (pronounced as voo zahvay) ---- You have
Elle ont (pronounced as ehl zohn) ---- They have

Well, the best way to move to the next step is just to get this memorized.

Music, books and films

Your favorite hobbies are related to music, books and films? For most of the French, these are

Music is musique ( pronounced as mew seek)
Book is livre (I cannot pronounce it correctly but it should sound something like leevr)
Film is Le Film ( pronounced as luh feelm)

Songs and Singing

How can it happen that, we are talking about French and we have not yet talked about songs and singing? So here they are

Song is chanson ( Pronounced as shon son)

Singing is chanter ( pronounced as shontay)

Chanter (I guess) is a normal verb with no special connotations.

So now if you know how to sing, can you express it in French?

parlez vous Francais

Suppose you are in an alien land and you want to know is the person sitting beside you knows French. So what do you ask…fairly simple

Parlez vous Francais (pronounced as parlay voo frahn say)

Parlez is the verb conjugation that is supposed to go with vous. Remember…the same verb follows different conjugation depending on the pronoun it follows.

So lets have a look at the rest of the forms of the verb “parler” which means “to speak”

Je parle (jhuh pahrl)
Vous parlez (voo parlay)
Nous parlons (noo parlon)
Il/elle parlent (eel/ehl pahrl)


Now lets say, someone asks you this question "parlez vous Francais ?"

Now, if you think you know great French you can say
Oui je parle tres bien Francais (oo-ee jhuh pahrl treh byan frahn say)

"Tres bien" means very good

If you think you know a little French , you can say
Oui, je parle Francais, seulement un peu (suhlman ahn puh)

"Seulement" means "only" and "un peu" means "a little"

Yes and no

How do you say “yes” and “no” in French?

Yes is fairy simple and written as Oui (oo-ee)
No is complex and written as Ne-pas (nuh-pah)

For instance,

Oui, je suis de Paris (oo-ee, zhuh swee duh Paree)
Hyderabad ne pas une petite ville (Hyderebad neh pah ewn puhteet veel)

Basic joiners

Its time to look at the two basic conjuctions “and” / “but” and some basic words.

et (pronounced as ay) : and
mais (pronounced as meh): but

Some other popular words are as follows

alors (pronounced as ahlor): so
aussi (pronounced as osee): also
ensuit (pronounced as ahn-sweet): then
parmi (pronounced as parmee): among
encore (pronounced as ong kor): again

Some sentences:

Moi aussi (pronounced as mwa ossee)

The first verb

Now that we have an idea of the very basic pronouns lets know about the very first verb in terms of utility

What do you say "I am" or "You are" or "we are" etc in French.

French is slightly complex as compared to English in the sense that the verb changes with the each of the pronouns unlike just singular and plural in English.


Je suis (pronounced as jhuh swee)
Nous sommes (pronounced as Noo sohm)
Vous etes (pronounced as Voo zeht)
Il/Elle est (pronounced as eel/ehl eh)
Elle sont (pronounced as ehl sohn)

Elle also means "they"

Familiarity with this verb is likely to help us in framing our first sentence in French

Je suis de Paris (pronounced as "jhuh swee duh Paree")

Nous sommes de Paris (pronounced as "noo sohm duh Paree")

"il" and "elle"

Now lets have a look at the other two pronouns “he” and “she”

Il (pronounced as eel) means he
Elle (pronounced as ehl) means she

There is one more pronoun Tu (pronounced as tew) and is the informal form of “you”. However lets remain away from Tu for the time being.

Lets look at the following sentences and find out Il and Elle.

Elle fait les courses
Il fait les courses

Je, Nous, Vous

I have always loved these three pronouns. So let me visit these three words.

Je (pronounced as zhuh) means I

Nous (pronounced as noo) means We

Vous (pronounced as voo) means You (either singular in respect or plural)

Without getting into the details, lets consider the following two sentences. We can stress on only the three pronouns for the moment.

De ou etes vous? (Pronounced as Doo eht voo)

Nous sommes de Paris. (Pronounced as Noo sohm duh Paree)

It may not be easy to decipher out the meaning of the above sentences, but understanding the above lines is not the objective at this stage. The idea is to have a feeling of the nous, vous and je

As long as it is possible to look at a French sentence and identify the nous and vous and je, the objective of this post is satisfied.

FRENCH - A ROMANCE LANGUAGE

The Romance languages comprise of all those languages that descended from Latin, the language of the Roman Empire. All Romance languages descend from Vulgar Latin, the language of soldiers, settlers and slaves of the Roman Empire, which was substantially different from the Classical Latin of the Roman upper strata.

French is a Romance language spoken originally in France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Switzerland.

Linguistically, the development of Old French from Vulgar Latin is distinguished by complex phonetic transformations and a simplification of the Latin case system.

When ancient Gaul (now modern France) was conquered by the Romans in 59 BC, its inhabitants spoke Gaulish, which was affected by the Latin of the Roman overlords. In the 5th cent. A.D. the Franks, a group of Germanic tribes, began their invasion of Gaul, but they too were Romanized. Although modern French thus inherited several hundred words of Celtic origin and several hundred more from Germanic, it owes its structure and the greater part of its vocabulary to Latin.
The period from 9th to 13th century is marked by Old French. French from the 14th to 16th century is refered as Middle French. During this period many words and expressions were borrowed from Latin, Greek, and Italian, and a group of French poets, the Pléiade , were reponsible for the development of French. The modern period of French began in the 17th cent. The vocabulary and style of Modern French have been influenced by movements such as romanticism and realism and the present day French is an amalgamation of the richness of the French development.