Parts of Speech
It's important to know the different sorts of words that sentences are
made of. This knowledge helps enormously when looking words up in
a dictionary for example, or when trying to figure out what goes with what
in a sentence.
Classifications sometimes vary a little from one grammar to another,
but it is common to distinguish in both English and French the same eight
sorts of words, known as Parts of Speech. This page provides
a few examples. Links to further information are provided below.
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Part of Speech
|
English Examples
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French Examples
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| Nouns |
man, time, life, hour, thing, object |
homme, jour, monsieur, temps, vie, monde, enfant, heure, année,
femme, pays, chose, travail |
| Verbs |
to be, to have, to make, to do, to want, to come |
être, avoir, faire, pouvoir, devoir, aller, voir, savoir, falloir,
vouloir, prendre, donner, venir, trouver, |
| Pronouns |
he, it, who, all, we, mine |
il, se, qui, je, elle, ce, tout, on, que, nous, le, me, vous, lui,
en, où, celui |
| Adjectives |
big, small, same, other, beautiful, long, green |
même, autre, grand, premier, petit, nouveau, certain, seul, jeune,
dernier, bon, français, beau, long, canadien |
| Adverbs |
not, very, less, so, always |
ne, pas, plus, très, encore, peu, moins, là, ainsi, toujours |
| Determiners |
the, a, any, some, my, his, her, two, three... |
le, un, les, des, son, du, au, ce, la, leur, mon, deux |
| Prepositions |
of, from, to, in, with, between, under, |
de, à, en, dans, par, sur, avec, sans, entre, sous |
| Conjunctions |
that, when, if, because, before, without |
que, quand, lorsque, si, parce que, avant que, sans que |
about how to recognize Parts of Speech and how they can be divided into
Content Words and Structure Words, including more exercises.
and exercises about how to recognize Content Words (Nouns, Adjectives,
Adverbs, Verbs), including more exercises.
about how to recognize Structure Words (Pronouns, Determiners, Prepositions
and Conjunctions), including more exercises.
Not all languages have the same sorts of words: consider yourself lucky
to be doing French.
Being able to distinguish between different parts of speech, adjectives
and adverbs, for example, can help considerably when you are trying to
understand a phrase or sentence. In addition, these labels (nouns,
etc.) are used extensively in dictionaries and grammars, so to get the
information you need out of these reference books you need to be very familiar
with both the concepts involved and the terminology.
Exercises
Many more exercises to practice recognizing Parts of Speech can be found
by clicking on the three
buttons above.
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