Hi there! For this French Connection, I wanted to discuss two verbs that involve an activity: nager and danser. Through conjugating these two verbs, you can use the same pattern on most other er verbs.
The verb vendre means to dance. The verb nager, however, means to swim. The reason we conjugate verbs is because these verbs literally mean to swim and to sell. In other words, if I wrote Je nager, the english translation would be:
“I to swim.”
Since this doesn’t make sense, we have to change the word into its base, without the addition of ‘er’, ‘ir’, and ‘re’. This makes sense for these, but for verbs such as ‘avoir’ and ‘etre’, the conjugations are completely different. By removing the ‘er’, we make the word simply mean ‘dance’.
An exception to this is if you were saying, “J’aime nager”. This means I like to swim. In this case, you would keep the verb as its infinitive and say “J’aime nager.”
Here are the conjugations to the verbs nager and vendre. Notice how they follow similar patterns for conjuagtions:
NAGER
JE- nage
TU- nages
IL/ELLE/ON- nage
NOUS- nageons (notice how the e stays before the ons!)
VOUS- nagez
ILS/ELLES- nagent
VENDRE
JE- vend
TU- vends
IL/ELLE/ON- vend
NOUS- vendons
VOUS- vendez
ILS/ELLES- vendent
Thanks so much for following the French Connection series this summer! With today’s edition, I have presented all of my knowledge from my first year of French class! Next Saturday, I’ll have new information from our first unit- FOOD!
Gabe
