[Originally posted on 12/04/18 on the Duolingo French for English speakers forum by CommeuneTexane]
Grammar notes like those below can be helpful if you’re having trouble with the lessons, so consider trying the lessons above before reading the notes. They’ll be more helpful once you have a context for understanding them.
Genders
French has two grammatical genders: masculine and feminine. All nouns have a gender that you must memorize. Sometimes, the gender can be obvious: une femme (“a woman”) is feminine. Other times, it’s not obvious: une pomme (“an apple”) is also feminine.
There is no rule of thumb to guess a noun’s gender, so make sure you learn every noun together with its indefinite article un or une as if the article were part of the noun, like “apple” is une pomme.
Personal Subject Pronouns
In every complete sentence, the subject is the person or thing that performs an action or is being described. This is often a noun, but a personal subject pronoun (e.g. “I”, “you”, or “he”) can replace that noun. In both English and French, pronouns have different forms based on what they replace.
| English | French | Example |
|---|---|---|
| I | je | Je mange. — I eat. |
| You (familiar singular) | tu | Tu manges. — You eat. |
| He/It | il | Il mange. — He eats. |
| She/It | elle | Elle mange. — She eats. |
Subject-Verb Agreement
Notice above that the verb manger (as well as its English equivalent, “to eat”) changes form to agree grammatically with the subject. These forms are called conjugations of that verb.
Here are some conjugations for verbs you’ll encounter in the first few units:
| Subject | Manger (To Eat) | Être (To Be) | Avoir (To Have) |
|---|---|---|---|
| je | je mange — I eat | je suis — I am | j’ai — I have |
| tu | tu manges — you eat | tu es — you are | tu as — you have |
| il/elle/on | il mange — he eats | il est — he is | il a — he has |
Important: If you find any errors in the Tips and Notes, have questions related to the grammar points above, or would like to discuss the topic in depth, please feel free to comment below. We ask that you keep your comments on topic so that this post stays educational and everyone can benefit from them. Any spam or unrelated comments will be deleted.
For more Tips and Notes, click HERE
Selected comments on original post
Do you think perhaps these could be released as a PDF with a table of contents? It could still link to the official unit tips for those that haven’t been updated.
CommeuneTexane [contributor]
Currently the Tips and Notes are on a 139 page google document. We have given consideration to the idea, but there are several problems.
- The current format is specific to Duolingo and wouldn’t work in PDF. It would be considerable work (many, many hours) to change the format.
- We don’t know how to offer it. Duolingo doesn’t support downloadable documents.
- Considering its hefty size (a grammar book) would it even be practical for French students to use to find things?
The other alternative is to update the web version notes, and then you could see them in www.duome.eu, and even print them. There are some obstacles with that too. Some of the new notes are too long to fit in the space we are allotted. In addition, external links are not permitted in the notes so those would have to be removed. Despite those setbacks, I may do this gradually as I find the time.
Could you make the Google Doc shareable so that way one can download it for practice or to make notes if a PDF isn’t yet available?
CommeuneTexane [contributor]
Duome.eu helpfully collected all of our notes in one place and you can print them as a single document from there. http://duome.eu/tips/en/zz
Thanks, that is helpful, but the instructions are all in French so not as helpful to me who is learning French. Is there an English version like on this message board? TIA Nevermind, I found it in the Tips and Notes but under the English version!
CommeuneTexane [contributor]
I’m so sorry. I linked the wrong notes! I’ve corrected the link up above.
This concept of gendered words is new to me. Am I going to upset someone in the transgender community by saying “un orange”? I mean, assuming I get the gender of a word wrong, people will still understand me; right? My grandparents speak French and I want to surprise them on Christmas. Suppose I screw up the whole gender thing, they’ll get what I’m saying?
CommeuneTexane [contributor]
Having a gender attached to nouns is a grammatical concept. A table is une table and a bike un vélo, but that has nothing to do with their intrinsic femininity or masculinity, they are just things. If it helps, think of it as a way of separating all nouns into two different categories, category x and category y. If you mix them up, the only community you may upset is the grammar community.
To your second question if people will still understand you, most of the time yes. Only rarely does mixing up the gender of a word change the meaning. HOWEVER, it will sound very odd to native speakers and it will distract from your message. The best advice I can give you is to always learn the indefinite article with whatever word you are learning. Instead of memorizing clé = key, memorize une clé = a key. If you do this early in your studies, it will soon feel natural to assign the correct gender with the noun and you will save yourself a world of trouble later on when you know hundreds and then thousands of nouns.
Lastly, enjoy the journey. I’m sure your grandparents will be delighted by your interest in French and by your efforts. Please don’t let fear of “screwing up” ever stop you from speaking and from trying. Making mistakes is all a part of the process; it’s okay. Many native French speakers have a sort of pride that their language is challenging to speak (and write) well, and they applaud the efforts of non-native speakers to learn.
Inqstv_Canadian [host]
Error: In the Personal Subject Pronoun section, in the table, it shows “vous” as the French translation for “you (familiar singular)” when that is not the case. You should either get rid of the (familiar singular) or the “vous”. Also you could add a new section for “vous” stating that it’s you (plural) or (formal singular).
Despite that, these posts are very beneficial. Thank you for your contributions! 🙂
Sitesurf [contributor]
This is the 1st section where early beginners are learning singular pronouns only. Plural pronouns (nous, vous – formal singular or plural, ils and elles) are taught in U04: Plurals1. TNs, U04: Plurals 1 (Plurals, Plural Articles, Plural Pronouns & Verbs, Agreement, Tu or Vous)
Inqstv_Canadian [host]
I understand that, but in this lesson it introduces “vous” in the table above (Personal Subject Pronoun) in an incorrect context. If “vous” isn’t supposed to be covered until U04, you should probably remove it from this lesson. The table would make more sense without it (unless it is referring to the formal singular version of vous, rather than the familiar singular stated above).
I know it may have seemed like I was encouraging you to add “vous” to this table, but that is not the case. I was just suggesting a way to solve this issue. The main problem was the “vous” being introduced in an incorrect context. As I stated above, the most logical solution would be to eliminate the “vous” entirely from the table.
CommeuneTexane [contributor]
Hello Carter,
You are right; the table is confusing with vous. It’s out of place for the first lesson. I’ve removed it. Thanks for the alert!
Duolinguists 