As a beginner in French your goal should be as follows,
1) You should be confident enough so that you are not afraid to exchange a few words with a French speaking person ,
2) Get acquainted to French pronunciation to a level where you can understand the French they speak to you, and also be understood by them,
a) You should be able to handle basic conversations in specific situations,
b) Don’t expect the results to be exemplary and also don’t forget to give yourself credit for your effort.
This article gives you the head start to basic rules and regulations in French . As English and French are pretty close , about 35percent of English vocabulary is of French origin. As a first step let’s take a look at the French words that we already know. Several French words are spelled the same and have the same meaning as English words. The only thing that may be different is the pronunciation .These words are called bons allies (friendly allies) . For instance , l’art, brave, le bureau , le client ,le concert , la condition , content, le courage , le cousin, la culture, différent , excellent, le garage , le guide , important, le journal , la machine , le message , le moment ,la nation , la niece , l’orange , le parent. Some French words ,don’t have the same spelling but have the same meanings. Forexample l’Américain/l’Américaine (American) ,la mémoire (Memory), l’âge (age), le miroir (mirror) ,l’artiste (artist), la musique (music) ,la banque ( bank ,)la nationalité (nationality) ,la cathédrale (cathedral) , nécessaire (necessary) . Some French words are faux amis (false friends) these words look alike to English words but have different meanings .For example , actuellement means now, not actually, assister à means to attend, not to assist , attendre means to wait for, not to attend .
As a second step let’s glance at some basics on French grammar, about the parts of speech and telling you how to construct grammatically correct sentences and questions. In French words are classified based on their part of speech these are verbs, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections . Nouns are used in a sentence to name things people, objects, places, concepts, and so on. House is a noun. But there are a few differences between French and English nouns . All the nouns have a gender in French , They are either masculine or feminine. So as to know whether the noun is masculine or feminine look at the word’s ending let’s have a look at masculine endings , eur ,eau ,isme ,ment , ail ,al , and Final vowels other than “e”. In addition, certain occupations are always masculine in French, even if it is men or women . On the contrary , some words are always feminine even if the person is a male . Most significantly, French nouns are always preceded by articles . There are three groups of articles in French they are definite, indefinite, and partitive articlcles . However in some places these pronouns are preceded by pronouns . depending on their role they are defined into subject,direct object, indirect object, or in some places used to show possession .
Adverbs are words that describe a verb or an adjective, or another adverb. In French the adverbs end in ment and they usually follow the verb . Verbs tend to give life to a sentence it expresses and action or a state of being . In French the verbs have three main groups er ,ir or re , also verbs can be regular or irregular . Regular verbs have the same type of conjugation which irregular verbs don’t have . Regular verbs follow a pattern , for er verbs the pattern is , drop the er from the infinitive aka the actual verb and add the following endings , e , es ,e ,e , ons , ez , ent , and ent . For ir verbs the pattern is to drop the ir and add is , is , it , it ,issons , issez , issent ,and issent . And finnaly for re verbs the pattern is to remove the re and add s , s, nothing , ons , ez and ent . Irregular verbs are verbs that don’t follow the above pattern its quitw difficult for beginners to get the flow but you can make it easy by memorizing and constant practice . Also these verbs change their tenses like futur , passé compose , imparfait , plus que parfait , futur anterieur .