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French Expression
| Meaning | to fall in love | |
| Literally | to fall loving | |
| Register | normal | |
| Pronunciation |  |
[to(n) bay ah moo reuh] |
| IPA | [tɔ̃ be a mu rø] | |
Usage notes: In French, falling in love is expressed as tomber amoureux – literally, "to fall loving."
Not tomber en amour
Rather than expressing love as something that you fall into physically, as in English, tomber amoureux describes love as a state of being – or rather, a state of loving.
Par exemple…
| Je tombe amoureux de Dominique. | I’m falling in love with Dominique. | |
| Elle va tomber amoureuse de toi. | She’s going to fall in love with you. | |
| Quand est-ce que tu es tombé amoureux de ta femme ? | When did you fall in love with your wife? |
Grammar notes
- Like other adjectives, amoureux has to agree with the word it modifies.
- De is equivalent to "with" here and can be followed by a noun, name, or stressed pronoun.
- As always, tomber requires être as its auxiliary verb in compound tenses.
Variations
- tomber éperdument amoureux (de) – to fall hopelessly in love (with)
- tomber follement amoureux (de) – to fall madly in love (with)
Related expressions
- être amoureux (de) – to be in love (with)
- un coup de cœur – love at first sight (object, place)
- un coup de foudre – love at first sight (person)
Related lessons
- Tomber conjugations
- Love language
- Terms of endearment
- Adjectives
- Auxiliary verbs
- De – preposition
- Stressed pronouns
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Verb conjugation tables for more than 1,600 French verbs in all the simple and compound tenses and moods.
In English, we say that the vowels are “a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y.” The last couple of words hint at one of the keys to understanding pronunciation: a vowel is not so much a letter as the sound represented by a letter or combination of letters.