It’s not enough to know a few words – if you want to communicate you need to learn how those words fit together, and that’s where grammar comes in.
What is grammar?
When we talk we do more than just say words randomly; we use them in a specific order and they relate to one another. Grammar is the explanation of how that works: it provides definitions of the structures of a language and how they’re used.
Can’t I communicate without learning grammar?
Yes – if you’re happy restricting yourself to phrases from a book or pidgin-type communication. You’ll just about be able to make yourself understood but conversation will be a strain and communication hit-and-miss. With relatively little knowledge of grammar, you can produce correct and unambiguous French instead. You’ll sound more articulate and it will be a much more constructive and satisfying experience.
How do babies cope without knowing about grammar?
It’s true that children learn to talk without ever having heard of a verb or a noun. But if you listen to a toddler you’ll often hear words like hided, eated, sheeps or mans, showing that the child has in fact absorbed the regular patterns of English and is applying them quite unconsciously – albeit not always correctly. As time goes on, irregularities get ironed out and the child, with no apparent effort, starts saying hid and ate, sheep and men. It takes many months of constant exposure to a language to learn in this way. By the time the average child is starting to form sentences, they will have been hearing their mother tongue for around 4,500 hours over a period of 18 months or so. Most adults want results more quickly than that. By consciously learning how French is structured and how new words fit within sentences, you shortcut the process considerably. But you’ll still experiment and make mistakes, just as children do, because that’s part of the learning curve too.
How much grammar will I need?
At the start, you can get by comfortably with the basics. As you carry on with your French, you’ll gradually accumulate knowledge, and more pieces of the jigsaw will slot into place. There are some aspects of grammar that you might never need or want to know about – as with most things, there’s a level that’s largely of interest only to the professional or the enthusiast.
Where do I start?
It pays to become familiar with some of the terms used to describe how a language works because it allows you to make sense of statements that you might come across in course books, such as: The adjective usually goes after the noun or The definite article is not used when … Focus first on the six main building blocks of a sentence. Read these descriptions, then see if you can pick them out in sentences:
- l Nouns are the words for living beings, things, places and abstract concepts: woman, son, doctor, Oliver, dog, table, house, Scotland, time, joy, freedom.
- l Pronouns are words used to avoid repeating a noun: I, me, we, us, you,
- he/she, him/her, it, they, them.
- l Articles are the, a/an and some.
- l Adjectives are words that describe nouns and pronouns: good wine; strong red wine; my wine; I am tired; it was superb.
- l Adverbs add information to adjectives, verbs and other adverbs: very good wine; you speak clearly; you speak really clearly.
- l Verbs are words like go, sleep, eat, like, have, be, live, die, that relate to doing and being.
What about vocabulary?
Learning a new language is a several-pronged process. Knowledge of grammar has a key place, with even a few simple structures going a long way towards making sure you’re understood. Knowing how to use verbs and when to include words like mais but, parce que because or autrement otherwise take you a big step further, letting you express more complex thoughts. But all these are of limited use without a good stock of words to slot into the structures – and the most obvious source of these is a dictionary
How else can I build up a wide vocabulary?
The most obvious source of French outside France is the internet, where you can find information in French on practically anything. Use a dictionary to find the key words relating to your interests then just browse. You’ll be surprised at how much French you absorb when words are in a familiar context that interests you.
Don’t forget that you already have a huge latent vocabulary simply because, for historical reasons, French and English have a lot of words in common. Some word groups are all but identical, others have moved apart slightly. Not only will you find your vocabulary increasing dramatically, but you’ll also have the knowledge and the confidence to make an educated guess at the meaning of new words.
Is it true that many English words are used in French?
Over the years French and English have borrowed and absorbed many words from each other. Most of them have stayed unchanged but a few have adapted to their adopted language. For example, boulingrin, which is a manicured garden or lawn, is from the English bowling green, bifteck steak is from beef steak and footing means jogging.
Similarly, the rules of English grammar are often applied to French imported words: we add an English past participle ending -ed to the French cliché and sauté, for instance, to get clichéd and sautéed.
Do these shared words sound the same?
Many of them are recognisable for speakers of the other language – but many more are pronounced with a ‘local’ accent, whether French or English. Some French words routinely used in the UK are not said as a French person would say them – cul-de-sac, lieu and bureau de change, for instance. The key to good pronunciation is to assume that even words you recognise might sound different in French, and to approach sounds and spelling with a completely open mind.
From Talk French Grammar by Sue Purcell, BBC Active, £7.99. Talk Spanish Grammar and Talk Italian Grammar also available
