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Chapter 3: SubjectsI can not explain about all thing about conjugation. There are several patterns you can conjugate, but I am going to concentrate on only one verb, to be. In English, we conjugate verb according to its subject. For example, if a subject is "I," we use "am." If a subject is "we," "you," or "they," we use "are." French does something like that. However the conjugation is more complicated.....I think. Following table shows subjects and its to be verbs.
�tre [etR] = to be
Je suis un japonais. I am Japanese. Elle est sympathique.. She is nice. Nous sommes heureuses. We are happy.
L ook at third sentence of the examples. The original word of happy in French is heureux. But it became heureuses in the sentence. WHY?? If you read previous chapter, you know the reason. Yes, it's AGREEMENT. Nous means "we" in French, so it's pluriel. But why -ses? Could we have -x? Yes, you could. But since the adjective is ended with -ses, we should know that "we" is all female. In case of pluriel and feminine, you have to put e and s in the end of the adjective. I n additon, you may think that whether there is "it" in French or not. Actually there is. "On est [on e]" is translated to "it is" in English. However, since nouns have genders, we use il, ils, elle and elles for "it" or "they."
M mmmm, it was a short chapter, wasn't it? But this chapter was very important because if you don't know about conjugation, you can not go any further. When you get to other verbs' conjugation, you will get more confused. Conjugation and agreement. I think they are key terms of learning French.
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