My Family and Friends: Grammar and Phonics (AQA GCSE French): Revision Note

To talk about your family, you need to know some important grammar – subject pronouns, the verbs être and avoir, and how to use possessive adjectives correctly. Let’s look at these grammar points in more detail.

Subject pronouns

Mon ami s'appelle Phoebe. Elle est très sympa.

• Subject pronouns replace the noun in a sentence

• They are useful when talking about others so that we don’t need to keep repeating their name(s)

• In the text above, 'she' replaces 'Phoebe'

• Subject pronouns can be singular (one person) or plural (more than one person)

• There are two French words for ‘you’

• Tu is used for one person informally, e.g. your best friend, and vous is used for one person formally or more than one person informally or formally, e.g. your teacher

• There are two French words for ‘we’

• On can mean ‘we’, ‘you’ (in general) or ‘they’, and is used very often in speaking

• Nous always means ‘we’ and it is a bit more formal than on

• Use ils to mean ‘they’ for a group of male people or for a mixed-gender group, and elles for a group of female people

Verbs être and avoir

J'ai deux frères et ils sont assez petits.

• These are very common and important verbs in French - être means ‘to be’ and avoir means ‘to have’

• You need these verbs to be able to describe and give basic details about yourself and others

• The sentence above means 'I have two brothers and they are quite short'

• They are irregular verbs, which means they don’t follow a pattern, so it is important to learn them well

• Here are the present tense forms of these two verbs:

Possessive adjectives

Ma sœur s'appelle Aurore et mon frére s'appelle Louis. Mes chats s'appelle Peter et Paul.

• Possessive adjectives show who something belongs to, e.g. ‘my’, ‘their’

• Possessive adjectives match the noun which follows in gender and number

• The possessive adjective depends on the gender of the noun, not the gender of the owner, e.g. mon père, ma mère

• The sentence above means 'my sister is called Aurore and my brother is called Louis. My cats are called Peter and Paul'

• If the noun is singular and begins with a vowel or silent h, we use the masculine possessive adjective to help with pronunciation, e.g. mon amie rather than ma amie

My family and friends: phonics

• If a word ends in an e without an accent, it is not pronounced. This is called a silent final e

  tante

• If the e is the last letter of a very short word like je, te, or me, it is pronounced as a soft, unstressed sound

  je

  te

  me

• [eu] and [œu] sound the same in the words leur and sœur - they are both open sounds

  leur

  sœur

• The [o] in the words notre and votre is an open sound

  notre

  votre