Salut chers amis (Hello dear friends)!
Welcome to another episode of French Grammar for Beginners on Ma Petite France .
I do hope your are finally gaining ground on your French grammar comprehension and also beginning to make simple sentences?
This week our lesson on french verbs continues.
Our main focus today will be on how to conjugate the french verbs that end with "er" in present tense.
It would interest you to know that french verbs are basically grouped into three forms : first group verbs which end in "er", second group verbs which end in "ir" and third group verbs which end in "re". Although, under the third group verbs, there are so many irregular verbs that have their infinitif/ Infinitive endings as "ir" and "oir" but that will be a discussion for another time.
These verbs are grouped and named according to their endings. For example a verb is called an "er" verb because it ends with "er" in its infinitive form. Infinitive form here refers to the normal state of the verb when it has not been conjugated into any tense.
Today, we shall be dealing with the first group of french verbs, the "er" verbs.
It is very important to note that each verb in french has two parts ; its ending and its stem. Whatever you have left after removing the ending of a verb is known as the stem thereof.
Let's take the verb "parler =to speak" for example. Being an "er" verb, "er" automatically becomes its ending. If we remove the "er", we will have "parl" left as the stem of the verb.
Are we getting that well? Cool! Now, let's get more serious. To conjugate a verb in the present tense, all we need is to master the present tense endings (of course, there are different endings for all the tenses in french). These endings are what will be added to the stem of the verb after removing the infinitive ending "er".
The endings correspond to each of the subject pronouns or nouns in the subject position as the case may be.
Here are the endings for present tense conjugation of "er" verbs: e, es, e, ons, ez, ent. Each of these corresponds to the subject pronouns : je, tu, il/elle, nous, vous, ils/elles respectively. Clear enough, right? Let us try some conjugations now.
Let's use the verb "parler" that was mentioned earlier.
Parler, minus the "er", becomes "parl". All we are going to do is just to add the present tense endings for each subject pronouns to the stem of this verb.
Je parle = I speak
Tu parles = You speak
Il/Elle parle = He/She speaks
Nous parlons = We speak
Vous parlez = You speak
Ils/Elles parlent = They speak
With this same format, we believe that you can correctly conjugate any "er" verb in present tense.
Note: The only "er" verb that doesn't follow this rule is the verb "aller = to go" which we've seen in our previous class. In case you missed that, kindly check our previous class on the use of the verb "aller" https://www.mapetitefranceng.com/blog-1/conjugatin-verb-aller
As we end the class for today, kindly try and conjugate the following verbs in present tense.
Chanter (to sing)
Frapper (to knock)
Demander (to ask)
Well-done! Till we meet again another time, do not quit learning.
Bonne journée (have a nice day)!
I totally get this!