Learn French In A Hurry

Grasp the Basics of Francais Tout De Suite

Laura K Lawless

• Publisher: Adams Media
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781440516665
• Topic: Sprachen & Linguistik
• Subtopic: Französisch

Sure, you can blurt out Merci! and Oui! Oui! and Garcon! as well as the next tourist, but in truth your French lacks a certain je ne sais quoi. That just won't do if you're touring the City of Light or sunning in Tahiti or ordering a la carte in a Montreal cafe. Whether you're traveling to a French-speaking country or learning French for business, this pocket-sized primer is your passeport to one of the world's most beautiful - and useful - languages. Learn French in a Hurry features:

• Common French phrases (days of the week, numbers, letters)
• Pronunciation and conjugation tips and tricks
• Grammar made easy
• Useful words and terms
• Helpful French-English and English-French dictionaries

With Learn French in a Hurry, you'll master le francais right away!

03 / Grammar

Intro to French Grammar

This is where languages get tricky. Concepts, rules, and exceptions. Let’s break it down and start from the beginning. French is a Romance language, although that’s not why it’s called the language of love. In linguistic terms, “Romance” comes from the word Roman and simply means “from Latin.” The complete language family classification of French is Indo-European > Italic > Romance.

Here are some things to know about the language classification of French:

Indo-European is the largest language family and contains most European, American, and Asian languages, including Latin, Greek, Gaelic, Polish, and Hindi.

Italic basically refers to Latin.

Romance languages are originally from Western Europe, although due to colonization, some of them are found all over the world. French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese are all Romance languages.

Since Romance languages are all descended from Latin, they tend to be similar in many ways. If you have already studied another Romance language, you will find that some French concepts are very easy for you because you already learned about them when studying a previous language.

Blueprint of a Sentence

As strange as it may seem, learning a foreign language like French will help you grasp certain English grammar rules as well. Let’s look at the structure of a sentence. Each sentence can be broken down into two parts: subject and predicate. The subject is the word or phrase that does the action and carries the description. The predicate does the rest; it is the action.

Consider the following in English:

subject…predicate

My friends and I…go to the movies.

The girl that I had seen last Friday…isn’t home today.

We…like it.

Note that the subject answers the question “who or what?” and the predicate answers what the subjects is or does. English and French sentences can be broken down similarly. Let’s look at each part separately.

Parts of Speech

Subjects and predicates can be futher broken down into parts of speech. The term “part of speech” refers to the grammatical classification o...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• 01: Beginning French
• 02: Building Your Vocabulary
• 03: Grammar
• 04: Putting It All Together
• 05: Person about Town
• Appendix A: French–English Dictionary
• Appendix B: English–French Dictionary