The Building Blocks Part 2: Verbs

In the last post, we looked at personal pronouns as the foundation of a simple sentence. These words represent the person in the sentence. Now to make these words into a sentence, we need to have the person 'do' something. This means we need to take a look at verbs.

Verbs are doing words. Here are some of verbs that are quite obviously 'doing' words:

to jump, to fly, to swim, to eat, to follow- these are verbs you can imagine physically doing

There are also less obvious verbs:

to be, to feel, to want, to have, to despair- these verbs are more linked to emotions and state of being

In a sentence, verbs carry the action. 'She' is not doing anything until we add some verbs. Then, 'She jumps, she flies, she swims, she does anything we ask her to do.' Notice how the verbs in bold and the underlined personal pronouns interact in this sentence to show who (personal pronoun) is doing what (verb).

Did you notice that both words the words 'to' and 'do' were both shown in bold? This is because it is the Infinitive State of the verb. Think of the infinitive state as the raw building block, before we change the verb into the shape that will fit into our sentence.Infinitive verbs are not tied to a certain type of personal pronoun or a certain time. They 'happen' or 'do' their action to infinity and beyond.

In English, these verbs usually include the word 'to' followed by the first person, present tense form of the verb. Sound confusing? It's not really.  Look at the lists of verbs given as examples earlier. They are all in infinitive form. Here are some more for you to check out (notice to check out is a verb in the infinitive form!):
to design, to choose, to give, to hop, to wiggle, to make, to type, to cope, to fling, to host, to skip...
If you are ever stuck on how to work out the infinitive state of a word in English, just ask yourself this simple question: "What do I want to do?" and start out your answer "I want .... ". Your mind willl probably be able to fill in the blank with the infinitive form of the verb. For example, you might want to work out the infinitvie state for 'trying'. After asking your self the question,  you would reply,  "I want to try".

Why do we need to know so much about infinitive verbs? Because, in French, the inifitive verbs are not quite so simple and determine how the verb needs to be changed to fit with our personal pronouns.

In French, the infinitive form of the verb is not two words as it is in English ('to' + the verb in first person, present tense) but in a single word. Instead of adding a 'to' in front of the verb in first person, present tense, in French an infinitive verb consists of a stem + an ending (also called a suffix).

There are three main types of endings:

-er
-ir
and
-re

These show how the verb needs to change to fit into a sentence. This post is going to look at verbs ending in '-er' as these are the most common type of French verb, and the most simple to change.

Let's begin with the verb  parler which means 'to talk'. The ending is '-er' and the stem is 'parl'. The stem shows the meaning of the verb. So, we have our infinitive verb, parler and now we want to use it in a simple sentence, by matching it up with a personal pronoun. Let's pretend we wanted to say, "I talk".We can't use the infinitive, because that would read as "I to talk", which doesn't sound right at all. We have to change the verb to match the personal pronoun we want to use.

In English, we change words like this:


To Talk

I talk
You talk
He/She talks
We talk
You talk (plural form)
They talk
 
Notice that in English the main diference is only when using the personal pronouns 'he' and 'she'. If we take the verb parler it is changed like this:

Parler

Je parle
Tu parles
Il/Elle/On parle
Nous parlons
Vous parlez
Ils/Elles parlent 

In French the verb is changed a lot more frequently! Notice that all forms of the verb contain the stem, 'parl'. Let's have a closer look at what needs to be added to the end of the stem to match the verb with each personal pronoun:

Parler

Je parle
Tu parles
Il/Elle/On parle
Nous parlons
Vous parlez
Ils/Elles parlent 

 Most French '-er' verbs follow this pattern. For example, danser (to dance),  would be as follows:


Danser

Je danse
Tu danses
Il/Elle/On danse
Nous dansons
Vous dansez
Ils/Elles dansent


Now you can practice some more simple sentences. Try the same thing with laver (to wash), aider (to help), and  commencer (to begin).

This excerise is known as 'conjugating'. Now that you are able to conjugate '-er' verbs, you can speak a whole range of simple sentences in French. Remember that practice is an important part of learning, and familirise yourself with the personal pronouns and the endings that accompany them. Next we will take a look at how to conjugate the other French verbs.