Saturday, February 24, 2007

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"