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French orthography encompasses the spelling and punctuation of the French language.It is based on a combination of phonemic and historical principles. The spelling of words is largely based on the pronunciation of Old French c. 1100 –1200 AD, and has stayed more or less the same since then, despite enormous changes to the pronunciation of the language in the intervening years.
French verbs have a large number of simple (one-word) forms. These are composed of two distinct parts: the stem (or root, or radix), which indicates which verb it is, and the ending (inflection), which indicates the verb's tense (imperfect, present, future etc.) and mood and its subject's person (I, you, he/she etc.) and number, though many endings can correspond to multiple tense-mood-subject ...
The third group is a closed class, [5] meaning that no new verbs of this group may be introduced to the French language. Most new words are of the first group (téléviser, atomiser, radiographier), with some in the second group (alunir). In summary the groups are: 1st conjugation: verbs ending in -er (except aller. There are about 6000 verbs ...
abaissement - fall/lowering; abaisser - to lower; abandonner - to abandon; abandonné - abandoned/deserted; abasourdi - stunned; abattage - slaughter; abattant - toilet lid
Most of these words are written with a leading h (haricot, héros, haleter) which is not pronounced itself, but a few begin with a vowel or glide (onze, oui, yaourt). Note that some words beginning in h do experience liaison (e.g. homme in tout homme). Such words are said to begin with a mute h or h muet.
Aside from être and avoir (considered categories unto themselves), French verbs are traditionally [1] grouped into three conjugation classes (groupes): . The first conjugation class consists of all verbs with infinitives ending in -er, except for the irregular verb aller and (by some accounts) the irregular verbs envoyer and renvoyer; [2] the verbs in this conjugation, which together ...
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à la short for (ellipsis of) à la manière de; in the manner of/in the style of [1]à la carte lit. "on the card, i.e. menu"; In restaurants it refers to ordering individual dishes "à la carte" rather than a fixed-price meal "menu".