French has a grammar similar to that of the other Romance languages. Grammar is the study of rules governing the use of language. ... Romance languages in the world: Blue – French; Green – Spanish; Orange – Portuguese; Yellow – Italian; Red – Romanian The Romance languages, a major branch of the Indo-European language family, comprise all languages that descended from Latin, the language of the Roman Empire. ...

French is a moderately inflected language. Nouns and most pronouns are inflected for number (singular or plural); adjectives, for the number and gender (masculine or feminine) of their nouns; personal pronouns, for person, number, gender, and case; and verbs, for mood, tense, and the person and number of their subjects. That said, case is primarily marked using word order and prepositions, and certain verb features are marked using auxiliary verbs. A noun, or noun substantive, is a part of speech (a word or phrase) which can co-occur with (in)definite articles and attributive adjectives, and function as the head of a noun phrase. ... In linguistics, the term grammatical number refers to ways of expressing quantity by inflecting words. ... An adjective is a part of speech which modifies a noun, usually describing it or making its meaning more specific. ... It has been suggested that natural gender be merged into this article or section. ... In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a word that usually takes the place of a noun or noun phrase that was previously mentioned (such as she, it) or that refers to something or someone (I, me, you). Pronouns are often one of the basic parts of speech of the... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Narrator. ... In linguistics, declension is a feature of inflected languages: generally, the alteration of a noun to indicate its grammatical role. ... A verb is a part of speech that usually denotes action (bring, read), occurrence (decompose, glitter), or a state of being (exist, stand). Depending on the language, a verb may vary in form according to many factors, possibly including its tense, aspect, mood and voice. ... In linguistics, many grammars have the concept of grammatical mood, which describes the relationship of a verb with reality and intent. ... Grammatical tense is a way languages express the time at which an event described by a sentence occurs. ... The subject of a sentence is one of the two main parts of a sentence, the other being the predicate. ... Word order, in linguistic typology, refers to the order in which words appear in sentences across different languages. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with adposition. ... In linguistics, an auxiliary or helping verb is a verb whose function it is to give further semantic information about the main or full verb which follows it. ...

Verbs

Main article: French verbs

In French, as in English, a verb is the controlling element in most sentences, although it is more common in French than in English for a sentence to have no verb. Verbs are conjugated to reflect the following information: French verbs are a complex area of French grammar, with a conjugation scheme that allows for three finite moods (with anywhere from one to five synthetic tenses), three non-finite moods, three voices, and two aspects. ... A verb is a part of speech that usually denotes action (bring, read), occurrence (decompose, glitter), or a state of being (exist, stand). Depending on the language, a verb may vary in form according to many factors, possibly including its tense, aspect, mood and voice. ...

• a mood (indicative, imperative, subjunctive, infinitive, participial, or gerundive¹);
• a tense (present, preterite², imperfect², future, or conditional³, though not all tenses can be combined with all moods);
• an aspect (perfect¹ or not);
• a voice (active, passive¹, or reflexive¹).

1. The gerundive mood, perfect aspect, and passive and reflexive voices are not synthetic. That is, there are not separate, one-word, conjugated forms that express these distinctions; rather, additional words modify the verb in order to convey them; see periphrasis. Also, note that French's gerundive mood (le gérondif) is not analogous to the gerundive in certain other languages (such as Latin and Esperanto).
2. In instruction, the preterite and imperfect tenses are sometimes called the preterite past tense and imperfect past tense to make clear that they generally correspond to the English past tense. Additionally, the preterite is often called the simple past tense to better reflect its French name, le passé simple.
3. Some grammarians consider the conditional to be a distinct mood, rather than a tense of the indicative mood. There is no disagreement over the correct usage, only over the best classification.

Verbs in the finite moods (indicative, imperative, and subjunctive) are also conjugated to agree with their subjects in person (first, second, or third) and number (singular or plural), but as in English, the subject must be included in the indicative and subjunctive moods. In other words, French is neither a null subject language nor a pro-drop language. In linguistics, many grammars have the concept of grammatical mood, which describes the relationship of a verb with reality and intent. ... Grammatical tense is a way languages express the time at which an event described by a sentence occurs. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article may require cleanup. ... In grammar, voice is the relationship between the action or state expressed by a verb, and its arguments (subject, object, etc. ... A synthetic language, in linguistic typology, is a language with a high morpheme-to-word ratio. ... Periphrasis, like its Latin counterpart circumlocution, is a figure of speech where the meaning of a word or phrase is indirectly expressed through several or many words. ... Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. ... Look up Esperanto in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Look up Agreement in Wiktionary, the free dictionary An agreement may be an agreement in beliefs, rules, practices (policies), or conduct. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Narrator. ... In linguistics, the term grammatical number refers to ways of expressing quantity by inflecting words. ... A null subject language, in linguistic typology, is a language whose grammar permits the omission of an explicit subject. ... A pro-drop language (from pronoun-dropping) is a language where pronouns can be deleted when pragmatically inferable. ...

Nouns

Every French noun has a grammatical gender, either masculine or feminine. The grammatical gender of an animate noun usually corresponds to the noun's natural gender. For such nouns, there will very often be one noun of each gender, with the choice of noun being determined by the natural gender of the person described; for example, a male singer is a chanteur, while a female singer is a chanteuse. In some cases, the two nouns are identical in form, with the difference only being marked in neighboring words (due to gender agreement; see the section on articles); a Catholic man is un Catholique, while a Catholic woman is une Catholique. Nonetheless, there are some such nouns that retain their grammatical gender regardless of natural gender; personne ("person") is always feminine, while (at least in "standard" French) professeur ("teacher") is always masculine, regardless of the sex of the person being referred to. A noun, or noun substantive, is a part of speech (a word or phrase) which can co-occur with (in)definite articles and attributive adjectives, and function as the head of a noun phrase. ... It has been suggested that natural gender be merged into this article or section. ... In linguistics, natural gender refers to biological sex, i. ...

A noun's gender is not perfectly predictable from its form, but there are some trends. As a very broad trend, nouns ending in -e tend to be feminine, while the rest tend to be masculine, but there are very many exceptions. More consistently, some endings, such as -tion, occur almost exclusively on feminine nouns, while others, such as -eau, occur almost exclusively on masculine ones. Nonetheless, a noun that seems masculine from its form might actually be feminine (e.g., souris — "mouse"), or less commonly, vice versa (e.g., squelette — "skeleton").

As with English, nouns are inflected for number; to form a plural noun from the singular, usually add -s, or sometimes -x. However, since final consonants are generally not pronounced in French, adding -s or -x does not generally affect pronunciation, so the singular and plural forms of most nouns are generally pronounced the same. Further, nouns that end in -s (e.g., Français — "Frenchman") in their singular forms generally do not change forms even in writing. However, some nouns are pronounced differently in their plural forms: for example, œil ("eye") becomes yeux, cheval ("horse") becomes chevaux, and os ("bone" or "bones") is pronounced differently when it is plural ([o]) from when it is singular ([ɔs]); and even with nouns for which this is not the case, a distinction will still usually be made in speech, as there will usually be a neighboring article or determiner whose pronunciation does change with the noun's number (due to number agreement; see the section on articles). As with English, most uncountable nouns are grammatically treated as singular, though some are plural, such as les mathématiques (mathematics), and some nouns that are uncountable in English are countable in French, such as une information (a piece of information). In linguistics, the term grammatical number refers to ways of expressing quantity by inflecting words. ...

Nouns in French are not inflected for case or person. (However, pronouns are; see the section on pronouns.) In linguistics, declension is a feature of inflected languages: generally, the alteration of a noun to indicate its grammatical role. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Narrator. ...

Articles and determiners

Main article: French articles and determiners

Articles and determiners agree in gender and number with the noun they determine; and, unlike with nouns, this inflection is made in speech as well as in writing. Perhaps for this reason, they are required in French much more often than in English: this enables nouns' genders and numbers to be reflected in speech. In French, articles and determiners are required on almost every common noun; much more so than in English. ... An article is a word that is put next to a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun. ... Determiners are words which quantify or identify nouns. ...

French has three articles: definite, indefinite, and partitive. The difference between the definite and indefinite articles is similar to that in English (definite: the; indefinite: a, an), except that the indefinite article has a plural form (~some). The partitive article is similar to the indefinite article, but is used for uncountable nouns.

Adjectives

An adjective agrees in gender and number with the noun it modifies. To make an adjective feminine, most simply add -e; to make most adjectives plural, just add -s. There are a few common exceptions: the feminine of -eux is -euse; beau → belle; -ien → -ienne; -f → -ve; etc.

Most adjectives appear after the noun (le vin rouge ), but a small subset of common adjectives, frequently for beauty, age, goodness, or size (BAGS) come before it: une belle femme, un vieux camion, une bonne bière, un grand appartement.

For some adjectives, the meaning changes based on its position relative to the noun:

• mon ancienne maison ("my former house") vs. ma maison ancienne ("my ancient house")
• ma propre maison ("my own house") vs. ma maison propre ("my clean house")

Many compound words contain an adjective: belle-mère (one word: "mother in law") vs. belle mère (two words: "beautiful mother"). Some of them use an archaic form of the feminine adjective (without -e): grand-route, grand-mère (but une grande route "a long way", une grande mère "a tall mother"). In language, an archaism is the deliberate use of an older form that has fallen out of current use. ...

Adverbs

Main article: French adverbs

As in English, adverbs in French are used to modify adjectives, other adverbs, and verbs or clauses. Most adverbs are derived from an adjective by modifying its ending and adding the suffix -ment (analogous to the English suffix -ly), though some adverbs are derived irregularly, and many do not derive from adjectives at all. French adverbs, like their English counterparts, are used to modify adjectives, other adverbs, and verbs or clauses. ... An adverb is a part of speech-class. ...

Adverbs are invariable; that is, unlike nouns, verbs, and adjectives, they are not inflected in any way.

Pronouns

Main article: French pronouns

In French, pronouns can be inflected to indicate their role in a clause (subject, direct object, etc.), as well as the person, gender, and number of their referrent. Not all of these inflections may be present at once; for example, the relative pronoun que (that, which, whom) may have any referrent, while the possessive pronoun le mien (mine) may have any role in a clause. French pronouns are inflected to indicate their role in the sentence (subject, direct object, and so on), as well as to reflect the person, gender, and number of their referrents. ... In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a word that usually takes the place of a noun or noun phrase that was previously mentioned (such as she, it) or that refers to something or someone (I, me, you). Pronouns are often one of the basic parts of speech of the... A relative pronoun is a pronoun that marks a relative clause within a larger sentence. ... A possessive pronoun is a part of speech that attributes ownership to someone or something. ...

As noted above, French - like English - is a non-pro-drop ("pronoun-dropping") language; therefore, pronouns feature prominently in the language. Impersonal verbs (e.g., pleuvoir — to rain) use the impersonal pronoun il (analogous to English it).

The French object pronouns are all clitics, and some appear so consistently - especially in everyday speech - that some have commented that French could almost be considered to demonstrate polypersonal agreement. In linguistics, a clitic is a word that syntactically functions as a free morpheme, but phonetically appears as a bound morpheme; it is always pronounced with a following or preceding word. ... In linguistics, polypersonal agreement or polypersonalism is the agreement of a verb with more than one of its arguments (usually up to four). ...

Negation

French has a two part negation, consisting of the ne particle, which signifies a global negation, preceding the verb, and one of several other words following the verb, clarifying the type of negation:

• ne ... pas "not"
• ne ... rien "nothing"
• ne ... jamais "never"
• ne ... jamais rien "never anything"
• ne ... personne "nobody" (but the word personne alone means person)
• ne ... aucun(e) "not any", but not identical to the German kein
• ne ... plus "not any more, no longer"
• ne ... guère "not much, not any, ~hardly" (archaic)
• ne ... que "only"
• ne ... point "not, not at all" (mostly literary)

Examples:

• « Je ne sais pas. » "I don't know."
• « Nous n'avons vu personne. » "We didn't see anybody."
• « Il ne fume plus. » "He doesn't smoke anymore."
• « Je n'ai aucune idée. » "I have no idea."

In colloquial French it is common to drop the ne in fast speech, although this can create some ambiguity with the ne...plus construction, as plus can mean either "more" or "not anymore." Generally when plus is used to mean "more", the final "s" is pronounced, while it is never pronounced when used to mean "not any more". So the informal sentence "Il y en a plus" can be pronounced with the final "s" to mean "There is more", or without to mean "There is none left".

It is also common in literary style to omit the pas when the construction is of the ne...pas form with the verbs vouloir and pouvoir ("to want", "to be able to"). Examples with “I don't know”:

• « Je ne sais pas. » (standard)
• « Je sais pas. » (spoken)
• « Je ne sais. » (literary)

• « Je n'ai pas pu. » (standard)
• « J'ai pas pu. » (spoken)
• « Je n'ai pu. » (literary)

Word order

• Subject
• ne (establishes global negation within phrase)
• Reflexive pronoun
• Indirect Object pronoun me, te, nous, vous
• Direct Object pronoun
• Indirect Object pronoun lui, leur
• y and/or en
• Finite verb form
• complement to ne to clarify form of negation (pas, rien, personne, jamais)
• Past participle
• Object (may be a negative complement)