French Grammar

Welcome to our French Grammar guide. Whether you’re a beginner or more advanced student learning French grammar is quite important if you want to speak the language well. Here you’ll find several lessons helping you learn the important rules fast!

1) Definite Articles	2) Indefinite Articles	3) Personal Pronouns
4) Demonstrative Pronouns	5) Sentence Structure	6) Negation
7) Adverbs	8) Prepositions	9) Possessive Pronouns
10) Question Words	11) Avoir Envie	12) Since - Depuis
13) En Train De	14) Il y a	15) Je viens de

Definite Articles: A definite article indicates a specific noun to a listener. For example, in English in “the dog”, the word “the” is the definite article. In French you will have to change the definite articles depending on the gender (masculine or feminine) or the noun AND depending on whether the noun is singular or plural (dog or dogs).

Indefinite Articles: An indefinite article indicates a noun that is not specifically identifiable to a listener. For example, If I were talking about “a cat” you would not know to which specific cat I were referring. In French the definite articles change based on whether the noun is masculine, feminine, singular or plural.

Demonstratives: A demonstrative is a word used to distinguish one thing from something else. In English the equivalents are “this, that, these and those”. In French these words also change depending on whether the noun they are describing is masculine, feminine, singular or plural.

Negations: A negation describes how to make a negative sentence. Negations are very different in French to English and also different to other Romance languages. For example, in Spanish, Italian and Portuguese you just put the word “no” in front of a verb and you get a negation. In French, however, you use the “ne + verb + pas” construction to make a negation.

Personal Pronouns: A personal pronoun is a pronoun that is used as a substitute for a “proper” or “common” noun. For example, in English the personal pronouns are I, you, he, she, we and they. In French these are easy to learn. However, there are different words for “you” when you are talking to one person or several people. Furthermore, you must also distinguish between whether between you for somebody younger than yourself or who you already know and the formal you for strangers and people who are older than yourself.

Possessive Pronoun: A possessive pronoun is pronoun that is used to express possession. For example, in the phrase, “My cat is hungry” the word “my” is the possessive pronoun. In French the possessive pronouns are a bit tricky because you have to change their form depending on whether the nouns they proceed is masculine, feminine, singular or plural.

Prepositions: A preposition is a word that links some words in a sentence to other words in a sentence. These words usually indicate the place or position of whatever you are talking about. For example, in English prepositions include: “for, in, on, at, over, against, beside, etc”. French prepositions are a bit tricky and take some time to learn and get right.

Question Words: Question words include: “Who, what, where, when and why”. Overall these are pretty easy to learn in French. However, when using the word “what” you must change its form depending on whether the noun you are asking about is masculine, feminine, singular or plural.

Word Order: Word order describes the order of words in a sentence. In English the word order is Subject + Verb + Object. An example is: “I (subject) drink (verb) milk (object)”. Word order in French is not too difficult to learn as French sentences also follow the same Subject + Verb + Object construction.

Adverbs: An adverb is a word that modifies any part of speech other than a noun. They usually modify adjectives and verbs and answer the questions, how, when, where and to what extent. Examples of adverbs are slowly, quickly, rapidly, surely, etc. One great thing that is excellent about French and good news for beginner-level students is that a lot of French adverbs are very similar to English.

Verbs: Verbs are action words, “to eat, to sleep, to go, to walk, etc”. Of all the area of learning French verbs are one of the most difficult to learn. The reason is that you have to learn how to conjugate them. Conjugating verbs (or verb conjugation) refers to how you change a verb depending on who is talking – for example, “I go versus he goes.”

More Resources: laits.utexas.edu | French Grammar Wiki