Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Learning French VI: pardon, n'est pas, mais

In this post of learning French, we will try to construct few simple sentences using the knowledge we have already gained from earlier post and also learn a few word usages very common among French.
To begin with, one word you will hear a lot while moving around in say crowd is "Pardon". Now, this is once again pretty much an English word. But check for the French pronunciation of this word which comes little bit like say "Paardon" with  'd' little mild.
Many a times we brush somebody while walking, you quickly say "Excuse me" in English. Well, "Pardon" do the same job in French. After "Merci" meaning "Thank You", Pardon is the another most used word by French.

In previous post, we learnt to say "It is good" = C'est bon
What if you want to say "It is not good"?
for negation in the form of not, french word is "pas" with silent 's' as suggested in earlier post.
But in general, an added negation is used along with "pas".

So, translation are:
It is       good =    C'est                  bon
It is not good = Ce + n'est + pas + bon
                         It   +    is not      + bon

Another word you need to know is "Mais" means "But". While you want to join two sentences, you many a times need this.
For example, continuing from our previous lesson if you want to translate the sentence,
"It is good but it is not comfortable"  to french, it will be,
C'est bon  + mais + ce n'est pas comfortable


22 comments:

Indrani said...

French is sweet sounding language, wish I had attempted to learn it when I was younger.

Indrani said...

Whew! Finally able to comment! :)

drkaustubhjoshi said...

Is there any problem you facing while commenting. Let me know if any, will try to rectify.

drkaustubhjoshi said...

It indeed is. I enjoyed learning it (what ever I could)

Anonymous said...

Doc !! Wish you publish a video on French speaking !! I mean it ! Why don't you?

drkaustubhjoshi said...

That surely is in the list. But I guess it need to wait a little. Thanks though for the suggestion.

Easwar Arumugam said...

I think it's a bit hard to speak French.

drkaustubhjoshi said...

It sure take some time to twist the tongue to get in to French

Bhavya N said...

Definitely have to learn some from you
http://ishithaa.com/2013/06/parus-umwelt/

Ritesh Agarwal said...

I once tried to pick up words...i self-tutored myself and still have that copy

drkaustubhjoshi said...

May be you can refresh your lessons with these additional ones here. Keep visiting here for more.

drkaustubhjoshi said...

You are welcome. A lot more to come. Do visit again.

vanderloost said...

Thanks for this post...very interesting and lucidly taught!

Shaivi said...

Je parle un peu de francaise. très bien...:)

drkaustubhjoshi said...

Thanks vanderloost. Appreciate your kind words.

drkaustubhjoshi said...

Très bien.
Bon courage = Good Luck

Rat said...

I always wanted to learn French. I even tried to learn thru a self-taught book but I found its the tough to learn that too without no one to practice the tongue. Thanks for sharing this lesson which makes me memorize the words easily.. :)

drkaustubhjoshi said...

I have been through the situation you are talking about. That's why I decided to making it this way that helps to remember French words. Thanks for visiting. A lot more to come.

Hi said...

This totally reminds me of my twelfth grade french classes, I had to write these sentences like 10 times. The conjugations and all :) C'est Formidable :D

drkaustubhjoshi said...

The good thing is I am not going to bombard with grammatical stuff here. Just simple ways to construct simple sentences one can actually use in conversation.
Thanks for visiting. Keep visiting.

The Mukhtiars said...

i was learning it in school , but have forgotten it now

drkaustubhjoshi said...

Yeah that happens. You can refresh it now.