Common French Mistakes

So you are learning French and you want to avoid the common pitfalls and mistakes. Well read on for 6 basic French mistakes :

1. To Be

The French equivalent of the English verb ‘to be’ is être. However, there are many expressions that use the verb avoir ‘to have’ instead :

Avoir faim = to be hungry

Avoir soif = to be thirsty

Avoir sommeil = to be sleepy

Take the time to learn these common expressions and learn that you can’t translate literally word for word all the time when learning a new language !

2. Accents

French accents aren’t an after-thought that you are optional. Accented letters are like a different letter to a non-accented letter in terms of pronunciation and the meaning of a word can change if you use an accented or a non-accented letter :

Accents : é, è, à, ç, ù, ê, ô

3. Gender

In French, all nouns have a gender, either masculine or feminine. This can be a difficult concept for speakers of languages whose words aren’t gender-specific. However, this is an important part of the language which you may as well accept and not try to fight against. As you progress in your French studies, you will come to realise the importance of gender and how other parts of phrases agree with the word based on its gender. So the important thing is to pay attention to gender from the outset and try and learn whether a word is masculine or feminine as part of the word as well as its meaning.

4 . –ing

In English, we often say : I’m sitting, I’m working, I’m doing. However French doesn’t have a tense for this in the same way, so they just say ‘je fais’ and this means ‘I do or I am doing’ depending on context. You can’t say ‘Je suis fais’ to mean ‘I am doing’. Another example of where literal translation isn’t always possible !
5. Tu and vous

French has two words for “you,” and the difference between them is pretty distinct. Vousis plural or polite. So if you are taliking to someone you don’t know, in a formal situation, or a group of people (even a group of children), you use ‘vous’. If you know someone as a friend, then you use ‘tu’.

6. Pronunciation

As a general rule, you don’t pronounce the last letter of a word in French. So:

‘Petit’ is pronounced ‘peu-tee’ (no ‘t’)

‘Petite’ is pronounced ‘peu-teet’ (with a ‘t’ as the ‘e’ is the last letter that you don’t pronounce)

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