French for Beginners Read Online Free Page A

Example: et en /εyén/ some speakers might pronounce a hint of the letter ‘n’ at the end.
Before the H aspirate or h-aspiré. Example: en haut /ə nô/ (top)
When it is preceeded by interrogative adverbs. Example: Comment est-il /komän-εitil/ (How is it?)
When it is preceeded by the toujours /t uʒuʁ / (always or still). Example: toujours ici / t uʒuʁ isi/ (still here).
Liaisons facultatives or Optional Liaisons – these liaisons are the words that have evolved through time. These are more difficult for beginners in the French language to completely master because the liaisons often depend on the level of formality between speakers. Some of the instances within which optional liaisons occur include:
When the letter is preceeded by a plural noun. Example: femmes arrivent /fεmzariv/
When a noun is preceeded by the present tense of the verb être (to be), which is il est /élεs/. Example: il est idiot /élεytidio/ (it is foolish).
When an adjective is preceeded by il est . Example: il est heureux /élεyuru/ (he is happy).
    It is important to remember that liaisons are different from enchaînement . In liaising, the silent consonants of stand-alone words are given emphasis due to the presence of a vowel that comes after it. In enchaînement, the consonant has always been pronounced even when the word is mentioned all by itself. However, once the word is attached to another word that begins with a vowel, the final consonant is transferred to beginning of the next word so that it would then be pronounced along with the first vowel letter.
    Some examples of enchaînement include:
Avec /ävεk/ (along with). When the word is added to avec, it would then be pronounced as /ävε-kεl/ (roughly translated to ‘with it’).
Elle /εl/ (it) – this is often used with the preposition est, and the prepositional phrase would then be pronounced as /ε-lé/ (she is).
    There are many other words that are linked to other words via enchaînement. Luckily, these aren’t that difficult to pronounce since all the speaker would have to remember is that the final consonant of the first word would be attached to the beginning vowel of the next word.
    Word Order
    Just like in the English language, the basic order of words in a sentence is subject – verb – object.  When you are not sure, you can simply use the sentence structure that you would normally use when speaking in English.  If you do this, you will be generally understood.

Chapter 5: Understanding French Verb Forms
     
    Verbs in the English language can easily be conjugated because the verb maintains the same form in most tenses while it would only require the addition of a single letter, such as the letter ‘s' when the tense or subject changes. In contrast, French verbs often have to be conjugated almost every single time that the verb tense changes. In order to understand how French verbs are conjugated, it would be best to first learn about the different categories that French verbs fall under. These categories include:
    1.        Regular -ER verbs - these are the French words that end in -er, such as accompagner (to accompany), danser (to dance), and so on. These verbs are the French counterparts of English verbs that are in the infinitive form. These are conjugated in 6 different ways depending on the pronoun to which it would be attached. The following shows the list of how the infinitive French verb accompagner is conjugated according to each French pronoun:
Pronoun
Rules for conjugation
Ending word
Je
Simply remove the last letter
Accompagne
Tu
Replace the -r with the letter -s
Accompagnes
Il
Same conjugation as with the pronoun Je
Accompagne
Nous
Replace -er with -ons
Accompagnons
Vous
Replace -r with -z
Accompagnez
Ils
Replace -r with -nt
Accompagnent
     
    2.       Regular -IR verbs - these verbs are words that end in -ir and are also the French counterparts of infinitive English verbs that require the use of the word ‘to' preceeding the verb.