Unlocking French with Paul Noble: Your key to language success with the bestselling language coach. Paul Noble
visité Notre-Dame.
(zhay visit-ay not-ruh darm)
The word “Paris” in French is pronounced “pa-ree”.
Bearing this pronunciation in mind, how would you say “I have visited Paris”?
J’ai visité Paris.
(zhay visit-ay pa-ree)
Now, if I were to ask you how you would say simply “I visited Paris” rather than “I have visited Paris” you might not think you knew how to say that yet. However, you will be glad to hear that I disagree with you because, in French, talking about what has happened in the past is far easier than it is in English. This is because “I visited Paris” and “I have visited Paris” are said in exactly the same way in French. I’ll show you what I mean.
Again, how do you say “I have visited Paris”?
J’ai visité Paris.
(zhay visit-ay pa-ree)
I want you to try to say “I visited Paris”, bearing in mind that what you’re going to say is exactly the same as what you just said for “I have visited Paris”. So, “I visited Paris” will be:
J’ai visité Paris.
(zhay visit-ay pa-ree)
As you can see, it is exactly the same. The French do not make a distinction between the two. Effectively, you have got two English past tenses for the price of one. And actually it is even better than that.
You can now already correctly say “I have visited Paris” and “I visited Paris” because they are exactly the same in French. With this in mind, do you think you can make a lucky guess about how you might say “I did visit Paris”? Just take a wild guess!
J’ai visité Paris.
(zhay visit-ay pa-ree)
Once again, it is exactly the same in French. “I have visited Paris”, “I visited Paris” and “I did visit Paris” are all said in precisely the same way. In fact this is one of the many wonderful things about French. You get three English past tenses for the price of one in French. “I have visited Paris”, “I visited Paris” and “I did visit Paris” are all simply:
J’ai visité Paris.
(zhay visit-ay pa-ree)
Let’s try this 3 for the price of 1 Special Offer again now but this time with a different example.
To say “I have spent” in French, you will literally say “I have passed”, which in French is:
J’ai passé
(zhay pass-ay)
“The weekend” in French is:
le week-end
(luh weekend)
So how would you say “I have spent the weekend” (literally “I have passed the weekend”)?
J’ai passé le week-end
(zhay pass-ay luh weekend)
And how would you say simply “I spent the weekend” / “I passed the weekend”?
J’ai passé le week-end
(zhay pass-ay luh weekend)
Just as “I visited Paris” and “I have visited Paris” are no different from one another in French, so “I spent the weekend” and “I have spent the weekend” are also no different from one another.
How do you think you would you say “I did spend the weekend”?
J’ai passé le week-end
(zhay pass-ay luh weekend)
Again, you have three English past tenses for the price of one in French.
“I spent the weekend”, “I have spent the weekend”,
“I did spend the weekend” – it’s all the same in French:
“J’ai passé le week-end”.
“In Paris” in French is:
à Paris
(a pa-ree)
So how would you say “I have spent the weekend in Paris”?
J’ai passé le week-end à Paris.
(zhay pass-ay luh weekend a pa-ree)
And how would you say “I spent the weekend in Paris”?
J’ai passé le week-end à Paris.
(zhay pass-ay luh weekend a pa-ree)
And “I did spend the weekend in Paris”?
J’ai passé le week-end à Paris.
(zhay pass-ay luh weekend a pa-ree)
Time to steal some words!
Word Robbery Number 1
Let’s forget our weekend in Paris for just one moment now and start stealing some words. Around half the words in modern English have come into our language via French. Once you can identify them, you will have a large, instant, usable vocabulary in French. After all, why bother learning French vocabulary when you can simply steal it?
The first group of words we are going to steal are words that end in “ic” and “ical” in English.
Words like “romantic”, “exotic”, “illogical”, “typical” and so on.
There are around 750 of these in English and they are the same in French, except that in French they end in “ique” (pronounced “eek”), becoming “romantique”, “exotique”, “illogique”, “typique” and so on.
Let’s now see how we can work these into our weekend in Paris and expand our range of expressions in French!
Words stolen so far 750
Bearing in mind what we’ve just learnt in the Word Robbery above, let’s try changing the “ic” on the end of the English word “romantic” into “ique”.
Doing this, what will “romantic” be in French?
romantique
(roe-mon-teek)
And so what will “fantastic” be in French?
fantastique
(fon-tass-teek)
Let’s now try doing the same with “ical”. Change the “ical”