French

Introduction

French is a Romance language. It's a descendant of the Latin of the Roman Empire. Its development was also influenced by the native Celtic languages of Roman Gaul and by the Germanic language of the post-Roman Frankish invaders.

It is an official language in 29 countries, most of which form what is called in French La Francophonie, the community of French-speaking nations. It is an official language of all United Nations agencies and a large number of international organisations.

French verb conjugation

Verb

French verbs are conjugated by isolating the stem of the verb and adding an ending. In the first and second conjugation classes, the stem is easily identifiable from the infinitive, and remains essentially constant throughout the paradigm. For example, the stem of parler ("speak") is parl- and the stem of finir ("finish") is fin-. In the third group, the relationship between the infinitive form and the stem is less transparent, and several distinct stems are needed to produce all the forms in the paradigm. For example, the verb boire ("drink") has the stems boi-, boiv-, bu-, and buv-.

Conjugate French verbs

Conjugate sample French verbs:

• être 'to be'
• avoir 'to have'
• aller 'to go'
• faire 'to do'
• pouvoir 'can'
• vouloir 'to want'
• venir 'to come'
• savoir 'to know'
• prendre 'to take'
• aimer 'to love'

Phonetic conjugation: aimer [eme]

Phonetic conjugation of French verbs is easier than written conjugation; present singular of all verbs (with a only a few exceptions) has the same form. Conjugate the verbs below to see.

• aimer 'to love',
• casser 'to break (apart)',
• chanter 'to sing'

References

• Conjugaison. Librairie Larousse. 1987.
• Conjugaison. Editions Nathan. Paris. 1995.
• Bescherelle 2. L'orthographe pour tous. Librairie Hatier. Paris. 1990.
• Bescherelle 3. La grammaire pour tous. Librairie Hatier. Paris. 1990.
• French verb tables. Harper Collins Publishers. Glasgow. 1995.
• Bescherelle 1. La conjugaison. Librairie Hatier. Paris. 1990.
• Anglade, Joseph. Grammaire Élémentaire de l'ancien Français. Librairie Armand Colin. Paris. 1918.
• Caput, J. et J.-P. Dictionnaire des verbes français. Librairie Larousse. Paris. 1969.
• Dubois et al. Dictionaire étymologique et historique de français. Larousse. 1993.
• Faral, Ed. Petite grammaire de l'ancien français. Librairie Hachette. 1995.
• Grevisse, Maurice – Goosse, André. Nouvelle grammaire française. Éditions Duculot, Paris-Gembloux. 2 edition. Belgique. 1980.
• Le Grand Robert, Dictionnaire de la Langue Française. Dictionnaires Le Robert. 2 edition. Paris. 1985.
• Simond, Ami. Les verbes français conjugués sans abréviations. Librairie Payot. 40 edition. Lausanne. 1993.
• Sohlberg, Anna-Liisa – Tella, Seppo. Lyhyt ranskan kielioppi. Kustannusosakeyhtiö Otava. Keuruu. 1993.