When.com Web Search

Search results

  1. Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
  2. French grammar - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_grammar

    In French, the equivalent of the English existential clause "there is/are" is expressed with il y a (infinitive: y avoir), literally, "it there has" or "it has to it". As an impersonal verb, the verb may be conjugated to indicate tense, but always remains in the third person singular. For example

  3. French verbs - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_verbs

    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 ...

  4. Auxiliary verb - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auxiliary_verb

    avoir, from which ai is inflected, 'have' is an auxiliary used to build the perfect tense/aspect in French. [6] I have seen the sun = 'I have seen the sun/I saw the sun.' g. Nous sommes hébergés par un ami. – être, from which sommes is inflected, 'be' is an auxiliary used to build the passive voice in French. [7] We are hosted by a friend.

  5. L'esprit de l'escalier - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L'esprit_de_l'escalier

    L'esprit de l'escalier or l'esprit d'escalier (UK: / l ɛ ˌ s p r iː d (ə l) ɛ ˈ s k æ l j eɪ /, US: / l ɛ ˌ s p r iː d (ə ˌ l) ɛ s k ə ˈ l j eɪ /, [1] French: [lɛspʁi d(ə l)ɛskalje]; lit. ' staircase wit ') is a French term used in English for the predicament of thinking of the perfect reply too late.

  6. Glossary of French words and expressions in English

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_French_words...

    a close relationship or connection; an affair. The French meaning is broader; liaison also means "bond"' such as in une liaison chimique (a chemical bond) lingerie a type of female underwear. littérateur an intellectual (can be pejorative in French, meaning someone who writes a lot but does not have a particular skill). [35] louche

  7. Copula (linguistics) - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copula_(linguistics)

    Languages differ in the way they express such meanings; some of them use the copular verb, possibly with an expletive pronoun like the English there, while other languages use different verbs and constructions, like the French il y a (which uses parts of the verb avoir ' to have ', not the copula) or the Swedish finns (the passive voice of the ...

  8. Presentative (linguistics) - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presentative_(linguistics)

    PRESTT le DEF sceau seal de GEN Charlemagne. Charlemagne Voici le sceau de Charlemagne. PRESTT DEF seal GEN Charlemagne 'This is the seal of Charlemagne.' However, the most common presentative in French is the (il) y a formula (from verb avoir ‘have’), as in the following sentence: ya PRESTT un a policier policeman qui REL arrive. arrives ya un policier qui arrive. PRESTT a policeman REL ...

  9. French verb morphology - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_verb_morphology

    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 ...