Unforgettable French

By Maria Rice-Jones

Unforgettable French uses memory tricks to teach and reinforce major points of rench grammar from the basics up to high school level, to learners of all ages. It may be used: by anyone who wishes to gain confidence in speaking French, as a evision aid, to consolidate the learner’s grasp of grammatical points, to complement whatever French scheme you are using, and by French teachers at all levels, from elementary school through to adult. These tried-and-tested memory tricks help to explain “tricky” bits and make learning easier. The memory tricks in are presented in a highly visual, page-by-page format. The sheets can be enlarged to make mini-posters or used as “aide-mémoires”.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brilliant Publications
• Release date: Apr 25, 2013
• ISBN: 9780857475978

Book preview

L’alphabet (The alphabet)

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© Maria Rice-Jones and Brilliant Publications

Names that start with the sounds of the alphabet in French

Common abbreviations

p61.TIF un C.D. p63.TIF une T.V. p62.TIF un W.C. p64.TIF un T.G.V.

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Hexagonie story: Les accents (Accents)

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© Maria Rice-Jones and Brilliant Publications

Stories about the imaginary land of Hexagonie, where the inhabitants are parts of speech, will help you to visualize the language. Read this story about French accents.

Keep your hat on!

Hello, nice to meet you! I am the verb Voyager. As you can probably tell from my name, I love to travel and discover new places. I’d like to tell you about my visit to the country of Hexagonie.

On my first day, I saw all the letters of the alphabet parading in front of the royal family. My attention was drawn to the letter e who was obviously making an effort to impress them with her three different hats.

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The first hat sloped upwards to the right (é) and was called an acute.

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The second hat sloped upwards to the left (è) and was called a grave.

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The third, which was called a circumflex, looked as if the two sloping hats had been joined to form a cone (ê).

King Être and Queen Avoir were so impressed by the letter e and her hats that they asked her to come forward and introduce herself. The letter e showed them her hats, one by one, and each time she changed her hat, she sounded a bit different.

I quickly realized that hats were very popular in Hexagonie. The grave hat was also worn by the letters a (à) and u (ù). Then, all of a sudden, the letter c made a dramatic entrance wearing a funny dress. The dress looked a bit like a tail and was called a cedilla (ç). I had to stop myself from laughing out loud.

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I wanted to find a way of remembering the two hats I liked the most: the acute and the grave. Then the story of a cute monkey came to mind. It was one I had been told on an earlier trip. In the story, a cute monkey goes up a tree to build his house, but sadly has a grave fall. Luckily for the monkey, he does not fall into his grave because after a while he is all right. Here is a quick sketch I have done to remind me of the story:

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Un, une (1) (One/a (1))

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How can you tell if a noun is masculine or feminine? Just look at its last letter!

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If the noun ends in "e like porte, it is probably feminine and we use une as it also has an e" at the end.

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If the noun doesn’t end in e like cahier, then it is more likely to be masculine, and you’ll need to use un.

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Family members

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aide.TIF Even though frère, père, grand-père and oncle all end in e, you obviously could only use un with them because those family members are male.

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aide.TIF Even though sœur ends with a consonant you could obviously only use une with it because a sister is female.

aide.TIF There is a grave accent (`) on the first e of mère, père and frère because it is quite a grave thing to have a family.

Hexagonie story: Un, une (1) (One/a (1))

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Read this story to remember when we use un and une.

The imaginary land of Hexagonie

Once upon a time there was a country whose shape looked so much like a hexagon that everyone living there decided to give it the unusual name of Hexagonie.

The inhabitants of Hexagonie belonged to different groups and each group had a specific job to do. One of the biggest groups was known as the nouns. Their job was naming all the different things in the land. As soon as they were born, all nouns had to be registered. Females were given names ending in e, while the males had names ending in letters other than e.

So, for example, the noun p22-regle.tif was female, but the noun p22crayon.tif was male.

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All the female nouns had a special playmate called une. They always followed her around whenever they were alone. They liked their little playmate because she ended in the letter e just like they did! All over Hexagonie, you could see thousands of une playmates followed by their female nouns.

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The male nouns had a playmate too - but their playmate was called un. They did not want a playmate ending in e like the girls! All over the land you could see thousands of little un playmates followed by their male nouns.

Un, une (2) (One/a (2))

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Most feminine nouns end in

Reviews for Unforgettable French

[Lisa Marie · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Such a great way to learn French! Maria provides great tips for memorising everything and explains things very clearly. It's a must for anyone learning French

[Fatuma Ahamed · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Such a fun way to understand and memorize French grammar.

[GraceSito · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Wow great book. Even for me as an advanced student, I learned something. Thank you so much for writing this book. And thanks scribd for making it accisible for us.