Sometimes I utter a phrase in French, which, as it leaves my mouth, I know to be utter garbage. Some recognisable words in there but strung together in an ugly melange of tenses that must sound horrible, with perhaps a hopeful colloquialism thrown in for good measure.
This morning I wanted to say “congratulations – I haven’t seen you since the baby was born”
I think I said something along the lines of. “Congratulations, I didn’t baby you to see….erm… I haven’t to see you when ….” And I gave up with a despairing look at my would-be friend, who muttered something that was, I think, a kind offer of what I was attempting to say, and we did the bisous (thank god for this lesson in how to do it right!) and I just felt helpless and awful, so cooed over the baby instead.
A vomit of French (un vomi de français)
It was, I felt, a vomit of French, and after more than a year of living here I felt ashamed that it was all I had. I think I’ll bake them some scones…
So times, they are a-changing. I am picking four tenses and I am getting them damn well sorted.
Presents
First: Present. I’m pretty ok on this one, but for some reason have started throwing the past imperfect for ‘avoir’ – to have, in where what I mean is in the present, so some revision is required. I’m saying “I had a good time,” when I’m still having it right now. Not a disaster, but a silly mistake and a bad habit I need to break.
Imperfectly past
Second: Past ‘imperfect’. I hate that it’s called imperfect as I can’t get my head around what’s supposed to be wrong with it. The best I can do is that the perfect past (see below) is a thing that was happened and was swiftly over with. The imperfect past is something that went on a bit… like living in the same town for five years – which may or may not have in fact been imperfect, but there you go.
Definitely done
Third: Passé composé, also known as Perfect Past, I think. The one you learn first at school (well, we did anyway) where you pair the main verb of your sentence with a bit from ‘avoir’ (to have) or ‘être’ (to be) and muck around with accents on the main verb ending. Well, just an acute accent actually, so it’s not all that fiddly. Except for the ones like ‘boire’ – to drink, where you do something else with the ending instead. Ho hum.
Check out this great graphic that is called the ‘maison d’être’ (or ‘the house of être’) and helps you remember which verbs go with être for the passé composé. A friend put me onto it and it’s super useful. Google it and you can find other iterations, worksheets etc.
The joy of things to come
Fourth: Future. There’s the ‘easy’ future, which still feels quite new to me and was something of a relaxation. For things you’re going to do soon, you simply use ‘aller’ to go, and combine it with another verb to make phrases like “I am going to eat lunch…” “Je vais manger déjeuner…” “We are going to move house…” – “Nous allons déménager…”. Love it. But the future I’m going to work on is the proper ‘simple’ future with some fiddly endings involving an ‘r’ and some ‘ai’ bits and stuff. As it stands I have no idea when to use it or why. So this is the biggest challenge for me.
NB: For my future tense learning I’m starting with this great article on the website FluentU – a fantastic resource for all things language. They write like humans and you can actually make sense of it. Phew!
Look out world!
Thanks for reading. You might also enjoy my post ‘French in a tangle’… as you can tell, I need to work on my French! Do browse by category – a new fab feature I just added 🙂
I’ve decided to organise my blog posting a bit, and post about language on Mondays, other living overseas stuff on Wednesdays – with a current focus on France but I may stray to past experiences to share some tit bits, and Frivolous Friday – which will be whatever popped into my head that I felt like writing about. This is a more-or-less kind of schedule and I reserve the right to stray once in a while, but I thought it might help to have some kind of structure.
Jumping Off Books 