French Grammar For Dummies

Veronique Mazet

• Publisher: For Dummies
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781118502488
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: French Language
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

The easy way to master French grammar

French Grammar For Dummies is a logical extension and complement to the successful language learning book, French For Dummies. In plain English, it teaches you the grammatical rules of the French language, including parts of speech, sentence construction, pronouns, adjectives, punctuation, stress and verb tenses, and moods. Throughout the book, you get plenty of practice opportunities to help you on your goal of mastering basic French grammar and usage.

• Grasp the grammatical rules of French including parts of speech, sentence construction, and verb tenses
• Enhance your descriptive speech with adverbs, adjectives, and prepositions
• Benefit from plenty of practice opportunities throughout the book
• Use the French language confidently and correctly

Whether you're a student studying French or a professional looking to get ahead of the pack by learning a second language, French Grammar For Dummies is your hands-on guide to quickly and painlessly master the written aspect of this popular language.

Part I

Getting Started with French Grammar

Visit www.dummies.com for great (and free!) Dummies content online.

In this part . . .

Discover how to sound out French words.

Get the scoop on nouns, including their gender and the articles to use with them.

Match adjectives to the nouns they describe and place them properly in sentences.

Start counting with cardinal and ordinal numbers, and then talk about dates and times.

Chapter 1

French Grammar in a Nutshell

In This Chapter

Getting to know French parts of speech

Building and embellishing sentences

Moving through verb tenses and moods

French grammar is somewhat complex, and this book gives you plenty of material to dig into, little by little. I start you off easy in this chapter, providing an overview of what’s to come so you’ll feel a little more familiar with the topics throughout the book. If you take the time to read this chapter, you get a good grammar primer to help you through the journey you’re about to embark on.

The Parts of Speech

Learning a language is easier if you know what it’s made of. To grasp the fundamentals of any language, your native language as well as French, you need to recognize the parts of speech, the various types of words that compose a language and how they work. The following sections give you the scoop.

Nouns

You should know three essential things about a French nom (noun):

It refers to people, places, things, or concepts.

It has a gender (masculine, he, or feminine, she), and a number (singular or plural). You need to know the noun’s characteristics to make other elements of a sentence match it. That’s called agreement in gender and number.

It can have different roles (called functions) in a sentence:

• It can be the subject of the verb, as the nou...