They also love using animals names like ‘mon petit lapin.’ À savoir: ‘chou’ is literally a cabbage, but is often used as a term of endearmentby the French. “Mon chou, mon bijou, viens sur mes genoux avec tes joujoux, et jette des cailloux sur ce vilain hibou plein de poux.” Image Credit: Coucou hibou, Lucile Placin, Casterman, 2011 To remember them, just use this French mnemonic: In general, you will never stop mid sentence to think about things like ‘présent de l’indicatif’ or ‘premier personne du singulier.’ Yes, it’s good to understand these concepts, but you need to be able to innately apply patterns of the French language in the moment more than anything.Īll singular nouns ending in ‘-ou’ take an ‘s’ in the plural form except for the following 7 words which end in ‘x’ instead: chou, bijou, genou, caillou, hibou, pou, jouou. I view learning French grammar as more of internalizing patterns than memorizing rote rules. The following mnemonics may seem obvious (if oiseau ends in ‘eau,’ you just slap an ‘x’ on to the end), but when you’re in the thick of writing a paper or sending an email, you want this to be instantaneous so you can use your brain power on things like style, etc. French throws a wrench into the system with the distinction between masculine and feminine words, often whose plural forms differ les uns aux autres. Sure, we have geese, mice, boxes, men – the list of weird plurals in English is lengthy. English is no stranger to some strange rules, but French might take the cake in the plural department.
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