Mistakes and Difficulties
French Mistakes and Difficulties
Erreurs, fautes, méprises, difficultés
Improve your French by looking out for and learning how to avoid some common French mistakes.
Agreement
Grammatical agreement is a vast topic - and one of the banes of French students. While in English we have a few pronouns and adjectives that indicate gender and number (e.g., he/him/his and she/her/hers), in French, agreement is found in 5 of the 8 parts of speech.
adjectives • articles • nouns • pronouns
Agreement with vous
Vous can be every type of personal pronoun, but its role as a subject pronoun may be the trickiest because of agreement.
agreement • B1 - Intermediate French • pronouns
Agreement with Direct Objects
Most French verbs are conjugated with avoir as their auxiliary verb in compound tenses and moods, and therefore do not require agreement with their subjects. But avoir verbs do need agreement in a very specific construction: the past participle must agree with the direct object when it precedes the verb.
agreement • B2 - Upper-Intermediate French • word order
Agreement with Pronominal Verbs
All pronominal verbs are être verbs in compound tenses and moods like the passé composé, which means that the past participles must agree with their subjects - at least in theory. In fact, it's not quite so straightforward.
agreement • B2 - Upper-Intermediate French
Agreement with Subjects
The three French verb constructions which include some form of être plus a past participle usually require grammatical agreement of the past participle with the subject.
A2 - Low-Intermediate French • adjectives • agreement
Agreement with Verbs of Perception
Verbs of perception are subject to grammatical agreement in the compound tenses, but the rules are somewhat tricky - they only agree with their subjects when they precede the verb.
agreement • B2 - Upper-Intermediate French
AI and AIS
The letter combination ai has two different pronunciations for verbs, though this is a matter of some debate.
Aimer – to like, to love
The regular -er verb aimer is ubiquitous and very useful, but somehow means both "to like" and "to love." In some contexts, this can make a world of difference as you certainly don't want to tell someone you love them when you're just friends, so how can you make it clear how you feel?
Aller – to go
Aller is one of the most common and useful French verbs and has irregular conjugations in most tenses and moods. Aller literally means "to go" and is used to create the near future.