Also note that des, like les is used in French before plural nouns when no article is used in English. Let's imagine you are looking at photographs in an album. In English, we would say "I am looking at photographs." In French, you cannot say, "Je regarde photographies," you must tell which photographs you are looking at using an article. If you were looking at a set of specific pictures, you would say "Je regarde les photographies." ("I am looking at the photographs.") If you were just flipping through the album, looking at nothing in particular, you would say, "Je regard des photographies." ("I am looking at some photographs.") Subject pronouns
French has six different types of pronouns: the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person singular and the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person plural.
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Subject Pronouns Les pronoms soumis
singular
je
I
1st person
plural
nous
we
singular
tu
you
2nd person
plural
vous
you
singular
il, elle, on
he, she, one
3rd person
they (masculine)
plural
ils, elles
they (feminine)
When referring to more than one person in the 2nd person, ?vous? must be used. When referring to a single person, ?vous? or ?tu? may be used depending on the situation; see notes in lesson 1.
In addition to the nuances between vous and tu, as discussed in lesson 1, French pronouns carry meanings that do not exist in English pronouns. The French third person "on" has several meanings, but most closely matches the now archaic English "one". While in English, "One must be very careful in French grammar"
sounds old-fashioned, the French equivalent "On doit faire très attention à la grammaire française" is quite acceptable. Also, while the third person plural "they" has no gender in English, the French equivalents "ils"
and "elles" do. However, when pronounced, they normally sound the same as "il" and "elle", so distinguishing the difference requires understanding of the various conjugations of the verbs following the pronoun. Also, if a group of people consists of both males and females, the male form is used, even if there is only one male in a group of thousands of females.
In everyday language, ?on? is used, instead of ?nous?, to express ?we?; the verb is always used in the 3rd person singular. For example, to say "We (are) meeting at 7 o'clock", you could say either ?On se rencontre au cinéma à sept heures.? (colloquial) or ?Nous nous rencontrons au cinéma à sept heures.? (formal). For more, see the Wikipedia entry.
Negation
ne..pas
Simple negation is done by wrapping ne...pas around the verb.
Je ne vole pas. - I do not steal.
In a perfect tense, ne...pas wraps around the auxillary verb, not the participle.
Je n'ai pas volé. - I haven't stolen.
When an infinitive and conjugated verb are together, ne...pas usually wraps around the conjugated verb.
Je ne veux pas voler. - I do not want to steal.
ne pas can also go directly in front of the infinitive for a different meaning.
Je veux ne pas voler. - I want not to steal.
ne goes before any pronoun relating to the verb it affects.
Je ne l'ai pas volé. - I did not steal it.
Nous ne nous aimons pas. - We do not love each other.
Other negative expressions
ne...aucun(e)
not any, none, no
ne...jamais
never
ne...ni...ni
