Learn how to use French adjectives
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| Salut, je m'appelle Ingrid. Hi everybody! I’m Ingrid. |
| Welcome to FrenchPod101.com’s “Le français en 3 minutes”. The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn French. |
| In the last lesson, we learned how to use the verb avoir, "to have," in the negative form. |
| In this lesson, we will start to learn about French adjectives and how to use them properly. |
| You will see that for adjectives, things in French are not as easy as in English. |
| So the basic rule in order to use adjectives correctly is that in French, adjectives always have to agree with the subject that they are qualifying. |
| Let’s start with a concrete example: C’est un jeu amusant - "It is a funny game." |
| [slowly] C’est un jeu amusant. |
| Here the subject jeu is a masculine singular word, so the adjective amusant is also in the masculine singular form. |
| Let’s see the same sentence with a feminine subject. It becomes: |
| C’est une fille amusante - "She’s a funny girl." |
| Here we have to add an “e” to the adjective to make it feminine. In French we often add an “e” to adjectives to make it feminine but not all the time. It depends on the adjective type. |
| Here are a few more examples to show the difference between masculine and feminine form. |
| Gentil is the masculine for "nice", "kind", whereas gentille is the feminine. |
| Beau is the masculine for "nice", "beautiful", whereas belle is the feminine. |
| Chaud is the masculine for "hot", whereas chaude is the feminine. |
| Délicieux is the masculine for "delicious", whereas délicieuse is the feminine. |
| Now let’s find out how to turn an adjective from singular to plural. Basically the rule is to put an “s” at the end of the adjective to make it plural. |
| But as is often the case in French, there are exceptions. |
| Note that even if we write an s at the end of adjectives, we don’t often hear the difference when we pronounce it! |
| For example, Julie est gentil means "Julie is kind", so if you turn it to plural it is the same Mes amis sont gentils, which is "My friends are kind. The “s” is added to the end, but the sound is the same. |
| To practice this switch, let’s see some examples: |
| If you want to say "My garden is big" you will say Mon jardin est grand, as jardin is masculine. |
| But if you want to say "My bedroom is big" you will say Ma chambre est grande, you added an “e” to grand. |
| If you want to say "My brothers are tall" you will say Mes frères sont grands. Adding an “s” to grand without hearing it. |
| If you want to say "My sisters are tall you will say Mes sœurs sont grandes. Adding a “e” and an “s” to grand as it is feminine plural. You hear the “e” but not the “s”. |
| Now it’s time for Ingrid’s Insights. |
| If you want to insist on an adjective in French, you can use the word très before short adjectives and vraiment before long ones. As in très joli, which is "really beautiful" or vraiment delicieux to say "really delicious." |
| In this lesson, we learned how to properly use adjectives in French and how to agree them correctly with nouns. |
| Next time we’ll learn the basic uses of verb aller, which is "To go," so that you will be able to say sentences like "I’m going to school." |
| I’ll be waiting for you in the next Le français en 3 minutes. |
| A bientôt! |
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