French Verbs for Talking and Thinking: 60 Essentials

Vocabulary lists usually give you nouns. But a conversation does not run on nouns — it runs on a small set of verbs that you use to say, ask, answer, check, agree and change the subject. You can know four hundred French nouns and still stall after bonjour, because the thing you are missing is not words for objects. It is the sixty-odd verbs that move a conversation forward.

There is a second reason this particular group matters more than it looks. French communication verbs are mostly irregular -re and -ir verbs, and that means their singular and plural forms differ by a sound you have to produce. Il dit and ils disent are not two spellings of one noise. Il comprend and ils comprennent are further apart in your mouth than "he understands" and "they understand" will ever be in English. With parler, penser and demander — the regular -er verbs — the plural is silent and nothing changes. With dire, lire, écrire, répondre, entendre, savoir and connaître, a consonant wakes up.

So this page is two things at once: the sixty verbs worth learning, grouped by what you are trying to do with them, and the dozen singular-plural pairs that are a pronunciation problem rather than a grammar one.

Dire — putting something into words

The one that catches everyone: dire takes à, parler takes à or de. Je dis à Marie, je parle à Marie, je parle de Marie. English "tell Marie" has no preposition at all, so learners drop it and produce je dis Marie, which lands as "I say Marie" — you have named her, not addressed her. Say the preposition out loud enough times that it arrives without a decision, because mid-sentence you will not have time to think about it.

Demander et répondre — asking and answering

Three of these take à before the thing or person: demander à, répondre à, penser à. In connected speech that à almost disappears into the verb — répondre à une question comes out as one run of sound, not four words. That linking is covered in Enchaînement: Why Your French Sounds Choppy.

And demander is a false friend worth isolating: it means to ask, not to demand. Exiger is to demand.

Entendre et comprendre — hearing and understanding

Entendre vs écouter is the pair that marks you. J'entends la musique means the music reached your ears. J'écoute la musique means you are listening to it. Using entendre where French wants écouter sounds odd but harmless; the reverse — écoute, tu m'écoutes ? when you meant tu m'entends ? on a bad phone line — produces real confusion. English collapses both into "hear" half the time, so this one has to be learned as two separate habits.

A second trap sits inside comprendre. The singular il comprend ends on a nasal vowel and nothing else: [kɔ̃·pʁɑ̃]. The plural ils comprennent drops the nasal entirely and gives you [kɔ̃·pʁɛn] — open è, then a clear n. Learners who treat the -ent as silent across the board, having learned that rule from -er verbs, say ils comprend and wonder why it did not land.

Penser et savoir — thinking, knowing, forgetting

Savoir vs connaître is the most-asked French question that has a clean answer. Savoir is for facts, information and skills: je sais où il habite, je sais nager. Connaître is for being acquainted with a person, a place or a work: je connais Paris, je connais ce livre. The test that almost never fails: if a that clause or a question word could follow, it is savoir; if a plain noun follows, it is usually connaître.

Out loud they also split. Je sais is [ʒə sɛ] — two sounds, done. Je connais is [ʒə kɔ·nɛ] with the same open è at the end. But the plurals diverge completely: ils savent [il sav] and ils connaissent [il kɔ·nɛs]. One ends on a [v], the other on an [s]. For the è at the end of both singulars, see é vs è vs ê.

And one high-frequency reduction: je ne sais pas is almost never said in full. It collapses to chais pas, which is covered in The Disappearing E. If you say all four words every time, you sound like a textbook reading itself aloud.

Réagir — agreeing, refusing, reacting

The bare answers belong here too, because half of reacting is one word: oui, non and peut-être each have a register ladder behind them, and si — the yes that contradicts a negative question — has no English equivalent at all.

N'hésite pas and n'hésitez pas deserve a note. French uses them where English would say "feel free" or "do let me know" — n'hésitez pas à me contacter. Translated literally it reads oddly negative; in use it is warm and completely standard.

Keeping the conversation alive

Two more verbs round out the set, and they are the ones that make the rest usable: apprendre (to learn) and enseigner (to teach) — plus lire and écrire, which behave exactly like the irregulars above.

The twelve pairs where the plural is a sound

This is the table to say out loud rather than read. Left column, then right column, back to back. Everything in the first group gains a consonant in the plural; everything in the second group gains nothing at all.

And the control group — the regular -er verbs, where the plural is genuinely silent:

Why this matters more than it looks. Almost every learner meets the -er pattern first, concludes that -ent is always silent, and generalises. The generalisation is right for most verbs in the dictionary and wrong for nearly every verb in this article, because communication verbs are old, frequent and therefore irregular. The result is a learner who says ils comprend, ils dit, ils répond — and who will not hear the problem, because the error and the model are coming from the same place in their head.

That is the specific reason this group cannot be self-corrected. You can proofread your own writing. You cannot proofread your own mouth: the version you produce and the version you expect to hear are generated by the same faulty copy. The only way out is an outside judgement on the actual sound you made — which is the argument made at length in Record Yourself Speaking French and They Nod But Don't Understand.

The prepositions you can hear

Four of these verbs change meaning with the preposition, and in speech the preposition is the only clue.

• penser à — to think of, to have in mind. Je pense à toi.
• penser de — to have an opinion about. Qu'est-ce que tu penses de ce film ?
• parler à — to speak to. Je parle à mon frère.
• parler de — to speak about. Je parle de mon frère.
• demander à quelqu'un de faire — to ask someone to do. Both prepositions, in that order.
• répondre à — never bare. Réponds à la question, not réponds la question.

À and de are one syllable each and both get swallowed in fast speech, so the habit has to be in the muscle rather than in the plan. Note too that de often reduces almost to nothing — parler d'mon frère — the same dropped e at work.

Five sentences to say out loud

• Ils ne comprennent pas ce que je dis. — comprennent [kɔ̃·pʁɛn] then dis [di]. One plural that gains a sound, one singular that does not.
• Je ne sais pas, mais je connais quelqu'un qui sait. — sais, connais, sait: three open è endings in one breath, and je ne sais pas reduced to chais pas.
• Vous pouvez répéter plus lentement, s'il vous plaît ? — the sentence you will use most. Rising intonation, and s'il vous plaît reduced to siouplaît.
• Ils écrivent et ils lisent le français, mais ils ne le parlent pas. — [e·kʁiv], [liz], then parlent with nothing at the end. The whole rule in one sentence.
• Je me rends compte que je confonds toujours ces deux mots. — the French r twice, a nasal in rends, and confonds [kɔ̃·fɔ̃] with two nasals and no d.

Say it, then check it

Conversation verbs are the highest-leverage pronunciation work there is, because you say them in every sentence you will ever speak. A wrong habit in dire or comprendre repeats a hundred times a day; a wrong habit in parapluie costs you nothing.

They are also the group where reading cannot help you. The singular-plural pairs above are not a spelling rule you can memorise and apply — by the time you have remembered that comprendre is irregular, the sentence has moved on. It has to be automatic, and it only becomes automatic by saying the pairs until the consonant arrives on its own.

Say the twelve pairs into Simply French and get each one scored. Three minutes will tell you which plurals you have been collapsing — and that is information you cannot get from a page, a book, or your own ear.

→ If you have never heard your own French played back: Record Yourself Speaking French

→ If you can read French but freeze when speaking: You Understand French But Can't Speak It

→ If fifteen minutes is all you have: Is 15 Minutes a Day Enough to Speak French?

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