French Level 1
    Unité 13: Leçon 3a
    Les Verbes
    Isn't Gilles wonderful! He is one of the star pupils at our lycée! I'm sure the reasons for this are obvious! He has really done a splendid job of giving you his portion of the information about "La Ville".

    In this leçon, I will be introducing you to some new verbs. Fortunately, all of these verbs are "-er" verbs AND all but one verb form are regular! Let us deal with the regular verbs first. You may even see a verb or two that you already know! These verbs all have to do with location, travel, etc as you will see on the chart below:

Track 42
Des Verbes  
EN FRANÇAIS EN ANGLAIS
arriver to arrive
habiter to live (in)
rentrer to return
rester to stay
visiter to visit
    We will now put together some sentences using our new verbs AND some of the vocabulary from Gille's leçons:

Track 43
Des Phrases  
EN FRANÇAIS EN ANGLAIS
J'arrive à l'école à huit heures. I arrive at school at eight o'clock.
J'habite à Québec. I live in Québec.
Tu rentres à la maison. You return to the house.
Il reste au cinéma. He stays at the cinema.
Elle visite les parcs. She visits the parks.
    I am sure that you noticed some new words, "à la" and "au" appearing in the above sentences. These words are what I call "combination words", because, you guessed it, they are a combination of two different words. There is one more word that fits into this category. It is "aux". To understand what all of these new words mean, study the chart below:
A + LE, LA, & LES  
EN FRANÇAIS EN ANGLAIS
à + l' = a l' "at the" OR "to the"
(followed by a noun that starts with a vowel or "h")
à + le = au "at the" OR "to the" (followed by a masculine noun)
à + la = à la "at the" OR "to the" (followed by a feminine noun)
à + les = aux "at the" OR "to the" (plural noun, masc. or fem.)
    The reason for combining the word "à" with the words, "le, la," or "les" as is shown above, is for that old reason, it sounds better in the sentence!

    You will now have an assignment using these new words, along with the other new vocabulary that you have acquired in this Unité. Bonne Chance!