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Beginner French Lesson > Lesson 1 > Essential verbs - My first verbs

Essential verbs - My first verbs

Overview:
The essential first look at verbs, the universe and everything.

Objective:
Understand the tense of the verbs and how to conjugate your very first verb.

LES VERBES - The verbs

For the purpose of this lesson we are going to explain a couple of présent de l'indicatif verbs. Put simply, the 'indicatif' relates to the mood of the verb and present to the tense.

Don't worry if you don't know / understand exactly what that means we will cover that in later lessons.

By present tense we are referring to something that is occurring now.

For the purpose of demonstration we are going to be looking at the French Verb REGARDER - which means TO WATCH.

Now some good news, the verb REGARDER (This is the Infinitive of the verb) belongs to a common group of verbs that all have the same conjugations.

So that means knowledge gained learning REGARDER can be applied to all the verbs within that verb common group.

REGARDER is a member of the REGULAR -ER verbs group, this is because the Infinitive ends in ER.

REGARDER is made up of the root 'REGARD' and the ending 'ER'.

Look at the tables below on the left is the English / French ways to say 'TO WATCH' (in the present tense), on the right is a break down of how the endings differ.

English French root ending
I watch    je regarde regard e
you watch    tu regardes regard es
   vous regardez regard ez
he watches    il regarde regard e
she watches    elle regarde
we watch    nous regardons regard ons
they watch    ils regardent regard ent
   elles regardent

FIRST THING TO NOTICE:

English French

I je

you tu

he il

she elle

we nous

you vous

they ils

they elles

..and missing from the example is 'on' which roughly translated means one or people. eg. On regarde - People watch.

These are called PRONOUNS.

The pronouns ils / elles refer to 'THEY' but elles is used when you are addressing or referring to just females, and ils when you are addressing or referring to just males or a mixed group.

Notice too that in French there are several ways to say YOU. The 'tu' form is used when you are familiar with the person you are talking to. To address someone who is older or whom you don't know you should use the 'vous' form instead.

The trick to learning verbs is to learn the endings and apply them to the 'root' of the verb. Lets take another example 'PARLER' which means 'TO SPEAK'

English French root ending
I speak    je parle parl e
you speak    tu parles parl es
   vous parlez parl ez
he speaks    il parle parl e
she speaks    elle parle
we speak    nous parlons parl ons
they speak    ils parlent parl ent
   elles parlent

IT'S JUST THE SAME TECHNIQUE:
Just use the same endings to the ROOT of the verb!

This same technique can be applied to the present tense for any of the following Regular ER verbs.

infinitive verb meaning
aimer to like

adorer to like / love

habiter to live (in)

détester to hate / dislike

travailler to work

Plus of course many, many more.

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