D'accord (aka about agreement)

I'm always on you all about agreement, not just because I believe we should all be agreeable, but more so (!) because French agreement is a redundancy feature in the language that supplies you with additional information so you can know who is doing what to whom and to what. As we ALL know by now, French 'drops' a lot of sounds in pronunciation; some of the agreement issues make up for the lost sounds.

So, like what? Like articles (le/la/les/l'--un/e/des/de/d'--du/de la/de l'/des/de/d') & adjectives (agreement m/f -- singular/plural) & nouns/pronouns. Yikes. But, it's not really that hard. Hardest thing for non-Romance language speakers (like many of us) is the whole masculine-feminine business since English, for example, has only gender for male and female beings (well, and ships and some cars).

The concept of grammatical gender has little to do with maleness v. femaleness. It has to do with the etymology (geneaology)

Planning on moving up levels in French?

Ok, so if you are planning on moving up into the 300 levels of French, there is a page in your book that is absolutely essential to getting a good grade in those classes. (It would most likely help you in this class, as well, ahem...)


Page 131, will be crucial to you when writing out papers in French. It shows you exactly how to plan out your paper, the correct way in French. So seriously, if you are thinking about selling back this book, I would find a way to copy down the information given in it before doing so.


The key to understanding how to organize your writing lies with this graphic

 

The first section represents the thesis (idée clé). The second section represents the area where you can discuss others ideas, or give examples. The last section is for the expansion of your idea. 

Also here is a website explaining the same thing. Personal Writing in French


I also found this website that is about how the French organize their writings on literature. Again, if you plan on moving up, bookmark this website! It will really save you in French Literature! (French 330 amd 331) Awesome Website on writing on Literature in French! ( They also have a special name for these types of writings Explication de texte and from my experience of taking French classes at VCU you can plan on having to write many of these in the upper levels! ;-) )




Does this help anyone about organization of writing? What would you like to hear about or have explained in the next post?

D'accord ?

So, why are Kayla and I always on your cases about agreement? Is it just that we think that we should all get along? Nope.

Agreement in French has to do with parts of speech having matching endings. Kinda of like putting the right color scarf or tie with a suit. If they don't match, well, it's kinda ugly. If it matches, well, you see how cute Shenita's nieces are together.

Actually, it's about redundancy of information. French drops lots of final sounds (beaux = /bo/) or uses apostrophes (l'école, d'accord)so if there aren't added signals in a sentence, meaning can be lost or become confusing. In a written text, with no speaker present, all that redundancy from gestures and winks, too, is lost. The written language, too, needs cues to insure meaning.

So, the agreements help you figure out who did what to whom or to what. One way is by gender agreement: articles (le/la/les/l'--un/une/des--du/de la/de l'/des/de/d') agree with adjectives agree with nouns & pronouns. Sometimes even past participles (être verbs)..

The gender issue rarely has anything to do with whether the person, place or thing is masculine or feminine. Obviously, some words are gender-specific to the sexual identity of the person or animal: l'homme, la femme, le chat, la chatte (meow-Kat for watch out, cuz 'chatte' has 'other' meanings ;-). Yet, if I say that Will (obviously one of the 'hommes' en classe) is a person, he is une personne, quite a manly personne, but still UNE personne nonetheless. Most of this gender stuff is a hangover from Greek and Latin. If it was masculine or neuter in Latin, it remained the same in French, likewise with feminine (although some neuter nouns became feminine because of the nominative plural -a form). Arabic, English, German, Peul, glottoliscious, loaners (not loners) tend to be masculine (le toubib, le smoking, le blitzkrieg, le foufou).

Big question: how do you do it properly (A+)? Take a look in the Blackboard Documents folder for my color coded explanations. To recap:
feminine article (la/une/de la/l') + feminine noun + feminine adjective (95% after noun)

• la belle fille
  
• une pièce sérieuse

masculine article (le/un/du/l') + masculine noun + masculine adjective

• du travail excellent
  
• un gros mari amusant

plurals go with plurals AND with m/f

• les belles filles
  
• des travaux excellents

Let Kayla and me know if this helps!

Bonjour!

I noticed today, that some students seem to be having trouble understanding which tense is which, especially when in it is asking about what the tense is in English.


For example:
What is a compound verb?
What does a pronoun do?
When is  the present indicative used?
Can you pick out a sentence with the present tense?
Can you pick out a sentence where a compound verb is used?
Which noun is the pronoun and what does it represent?


Let's use this blog to answer these questions and whatever other questions we may find with this blog! 


As you have questions, please ask them! This will make a great reference blog not only for this class, but many others!


Don't be embarrassed to ask! I am positive if you have a question, someone else wants to know the answer to it too!




First, we can work on these questions and then move on to more.