Why French Grammar is so difficult ?
Table of Contents
Introduction
Accent anglais: Excuse-me, pouvoir tu passer me le jaune livre sur là ?
Accent français : I sorry, but I not understanding you say what. You can repeat help me please?
If you are learning English, or French, or German, or Japanese, I am quoting those deliberately because they are often pointed out as hard by learners, you have probably complained at least once about how difficult their grammar is. And you would be half correct to say so. But only half.
Difficult, it is yes. But a lot of difficulty comes from you. And in this video, I am going to try to explain you why you find grammar difficult but also to give you tips to make it easier, mostly by changing your approach to it.
But first, I need to define with you what grammar is. Grammar is a set of rules that define how a language is or should be spoken according to native people’s standards. Even native people make grammar mistakes, constantly: for example if you say “He don’t know” instead of he doesn’t, you are making a grammar mistake. When students speak of grammar, they often refer to two aspects of it:
The first one is syntax: syntax is an aspect of the language that tells two things:
- Which words should be used to mean what you want to mean. For example in English, you say “I am hungry”, while in French, you say literally “I have hunger”. J’ai faim. In English, if you want to mean that you are going inside something, you often say “I am going in”, or “I am walking in”, while in French, you would just say “J’entre”, without using any word such as “in”.
- The second thing syntax defines is the order in which words appear in a sentence: in English, you say “I give you”, while in French, we say “Je te donne” so literally I you give.
Syntax often causes a lot of trouble to learners and I’ll elaborate a bit more on it later.
The second aspect learners often struggle with is conjugation: verbs are like Instagramers, they flex (joking). They change form according to the time, or tense you are talking about, but also the mode, or purpose of your sentence.
This is why I am going to divide this into 3 parts:
I – The importance of grammar fundamentals
II – Syntax: From word for word to clever sentence construction
III – Conjugation: flex the verbs, do not let them flex you
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Why you’re struggling with grammar: part 1 – You don’t have the fundamentals
The amount of rules surrounding spelling in the French language is quite high, this is true. This is why a lot of native speakers make spelling mistakes, which is often regarded as a problem by the French ministry of education and, wider, culturally, because it is often regarded as a sign of lack of diligence, at least. You misspell, you’re or were a poor student. So you must be stupid. That’s the logic. French pupils learn about grammar up to a late stage: from grade 2 until grade 10, actually, because the best way to cope with spelling mistakes is to understand how grammar works.
As a non-native speaker, spelling mistakes are much more forgivable in French culture. Nonetheless, being completely ignorant of grammatical concepts is definitely slowing down your progress. Here is why:
A big part of our school grammar program is to be able to identify word classes and words functions in a sentence. From my own knowledge, in the English speaking world, pupils learn very little about it at school. So when they learn a foreign language, they often have to learn all the basic grammar concepts that are applicable to any language, including theirs, which comes along with a rather complex terminology (preposition, indirect object, relative clause…), on top of having to learn the language itself. Yet, it is very important that you accept to go through this extra little pile of knowledge because a lot of grammar rules that differ from English are based on them. Let me give you a few examples.
When you say I am going to my French class, in French, it translates into “Je vais à mon cours de français”. While “cours” stands for class, you see that the way we clarify the type of class we are going to in both languages is not quite similar: we put the word French in front of the word class in English, while in French, we connect the word “français” to the word “cours”, after it, introduced by the preposition “de”.
You may learn this by heart because you use it quite often, and move on. And I’d admire your insouciance, haha.
But now, let’s take a similar phrase: I am going to my cooking class.
Let’s assume you know all the words in French to make that sentence here: class is still “cours”, while cooking is “cuisiner”. So you may apply the same structure as for “French class”: mon cours de cuisiner. However, it doesn’t work. And you probably don’t know why, yet. Wait for it, here I come.
A huge difference exists in English when it comes to naming actions. In French, we will generally use a specific noun for them: swimming – la natation, dancing – la danse, sewing – la couture… While in English, you tend to take a verb, turn it into a present participle (by adding “ing” at the end) and then use it as a noun (or gerund, in English): to swim => swimming, to dance => dancing, to sew => sewing…
The problem is that the “verb + ing” thing is not always used as a noun in English. It may also be part of a conjugated verb in continuous tenses (I am swimming) or used as an adjective (The swimming person over there). And they all translate differently in French.
Swimming is healthy => La natation est bonne pour la santé.
I am swimming => Je nage.
The swimming person, over there => La personne qui nage or nageant, là-bas.
As a consequence, you need to know what kind of word cooking in cooking class is. Here, it means the activity of cooking, so it is… a noun. And the French noun for cooking is cuisine.
A cooking class => Un cours de cuisine. See how easier it becomes?
Now, you wish to say “I love this French show”. This is where you may come across a real translation problem if you don’t understand what you are saying. Is it a show about French language? Or is it a show in French language?
If it’s the first one, then French is a noun, that gives more information about the other noun show. In this case, you need to use the structure that applies to nouns completing other nouns in French: une émission de français.
If it’s the second case, French is an adjective. In this case, you’d simply say “Une émission française”. The preposition “de” introducing the genitive disappears, and the adjective takes the gender and number of the noun it completes: feminine, singular, which does sound in French. FrançaiSE.
It may look rather advanced and overcomplicated, but being able to identify the class of the words you use unlocks your understanding of how to switch from one language to another, because this transcription works EVERY TIME.
Let’s take a few instances:
Light in English may translate as an adjective, synonym of lightweight, meaning “Léger” in French, or as a noun, as glow, equivalent to “Lumière”.
Then, how would say a light ray or radiation? Well, if you know that you’re using light as an adjective to mean soft or mild, you’ll know it should be rendered into “un rayon léger”. On the other hand, if you want to use the noun light to tell what the ray is made of, knowing that it’s a noun will assure you the right translation is “un rayon DE lumière”. But that is already too easy, let’s take a trickier case.
Deadly in English can be an adverb and an adjective at once. So, knowing that, in the phrase “My friend was deadly injured” (my deepest condolences for the friend you just lost for the sake of my example), deadly is an adverb, completing the adjective injured, will definitely help you figure out that in French, ton ami a été mortelleMENT blessé. But if your friend received a deadly (adj.) injury instead, il a malheureusement reçu une blessure mortelle, because this the right form of the adjective in French.
In both English and French, the word orange is an adjective as well as a noun. So how would you say « an orange perfume » : if you mean that the perfume, which is a liquid, is of orange color, then it’s an adjective: un parfum orange. While if you want to mean that the scent of the perfume is that of the fruit, orange being the name of the fruit is then used as a noun. Therefore, “un parfum d’orange” is the correct way to say it.
Now here’s a quick drill for you. How would you translate the two expressions a school director and a school trip?
Likewise, being able to identify certain functions in a sentence, meaning what a group of words is used for in the meaning creation process, can be crucial to level up your confidence in grammar.
If you want to translate the underlined part of the following sentence:
My brother, who I know is in town, didn’t call me. I am so disappointed!
It’s important that you can recognize what is a subject or what is an object. Indeed, in French, the relative pronoun you’d use as who, in this sentence will vary, according to whether who is the subject or the object of the relative clause. Am I speaking Chinese to you? Or rather French? Not quite. Unfortunately, it’s just English.
The subject is the part of the sentence which performs the action the verb translates. The object is the part of the sentence which the action of the verb applies onto.
The cat ate the mouse.
Subject – verb – object.
Now, a relative clause, is a sentence that you shortened by using a relative pronoun (who, what, whose, that…) and integrated into another sentence to give more information about a noun.
The cat ate the mouse. The cat is on the table. Initially two sentences.
The cat that is on the table ate the mouse. The second sentence became a relative clause.
Back to our model sentence now:
My brother, who I know is in town, didn’t call me. I am so disappointed!
If who is the subject of the blended sentence My brother is in town, who will translate into “qui” = > Mon frère, qui est en ville, ne m’a pas appelé.
Yet, if who is the object of your relative clause, as in My brother, who I know is in town, didn’t call me, then who will translate into “dont”, in this case.
I know how you must be feeling after reading this. It’s too complicated for me. That’s a lot more work to do than what I am capable of doing.
A few comments.
First of all, I forgot my keys inside my car after locking it, for the 4th time this week, so if I am able to understand this, you definitely can. Just to say that I am no cleverer than you, at all.
Joke aside, you already know MANY concepts in life. Do you drive? The road signs, rules, codes, are as many concepts you master without even thinking about it. The concepts are not difficult to learn. It’s just the terminology that scares you, because it’s new and looks wordy, and the amount of information fed to you at once. But Rome wasn’t built in one day and yes, you are and will become even more magnificent than Rome because they were, after all, just a pack of uncultured brutal warriors who once fell in love with Aristotle. Do things progressively, be patient with yourself, and have a learning plan.
Also, understanding these concepts in English, for English, will definitely make things easier for you. Once you master them, you can transfer them to French, or absolutely ANY language you plan to learn, because they are universal. The grammar varies across languages, the concepts we use to analyze it are relevant for all. So, indulge yourself by learning grammar in English for English first, and then, use it when you speak French.
I guarantee you that my solid bases in grammar theory helped me 100 folds learn English. 10 years ago, I couldn’t form a correct sentence. And I figured it all out by myself, without taking lessons, just by analyzing bits and pieces of language I read or heard, and using these many useful tools I have just mentioned in the first part of this article, that I had up my sleeve.
Etienne
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