Food and Drink: Grammar and Phonics (AQA GCSE French): Revision Note

To say what you eat and drink and when, you need to know some important grammar – verbs manger, boire and prendre and the partitive article, as well as telling the time to say what time you eat different meals. Let’s look at these grammar points in more detail.

Verbs manger, boire and prendre

• The verb manger means ‘to eat’ and the verb boire means ‘to drink’

• We can use the verb prendre (‘to take’) to replace either of these verbs, which changes its meaning to ‘to have’, e.g. ‘I have coffee’

• Here are these verbs in the present tense - be careful with the irregular forms!

Partitive article

• To talk about food and drink in French, use the partitive article with the verbs manger, boire and prendre

• This means ‘some’ in English, e.g. ‘some water’, ‘some vegetables’. We often don’t use it in English (‘I am eating cake), but it is always required in French (je mange du gâteau)

• The partitive article depends on the noun it is used with

Telling the time

• To say when you eat meals, you need to be able to give the time in French

• To say ‘at’ + a time, use à

• To say ‘o’clock’, use heure(s) - we can often leave this out in English, but we must include it in French

• Add the words for ‘quarter past’, ‘quarter to’ and ‘half past’ after heure(s)

Food and drink: phonics

• The sounds [ain], [in], [aim] and [im] are nasal in French. They all sound exactly the same! 

  pain

  fin

  faim

  important