INTERMEDIATE. LESSON #7. L'HISTOIRE2

« Sa maman l’aimait très fort mais elle avait beaucoup de travail pour diriger son royaume. Il y avait les réunions, les papiers et puis ceci et puis cela. Elle n’était pas toujours là pour lui. Mais un jour, elle rencontre un monsieur charmant, un duc très gentil et très poli. Elle passe beaucoup de temps avec lui. »

A suivre.
TRANSLATION
- « His mom loved him very much but she had a lot of work to lead her Kingdom. There was meetings, paper work and this and that. She was not always there for him. But one day, she meets a nice man, a very nice and polite Duke. She spends a lot of time with him. »

To be continued.
In tales, when the story begins for true, we stop using the imparfait tense. Here we choosed to use the present because it was easier. But, for real, French people often use another tense in fairy tales : the passé simple, which maybe is the more difficult tense to learn and about which we decided to speak later…
Diriger, mener : to lead.
Réunion (fém.) : meeting.
Papier (masc.) : paper, paper work.
Charmant, charmante : charming.
Duc (masc.) : duke.
Passer (du temps) : to spend (some time).
Be careful with some verbs such as manger or diriger (all the verbs that end with –ger).
To conjugate these verb at the imparfait tense, we do exactly the same as for the other verbs : we first conjugate them at the present tense with nous then we remove –ons and obtain the stem we’ll use for the imparfait. We already saw that and it is always true.

But let’s have a look at the –ger verbs :
manger --> nous mangeons --> mange-
diriger --> nous dirigeons --> dirige-


You can notice there is an –e at the end of the stem.

This –e is very important and we need to keep it with je, tu, il et ils.
In French, when we have « ga », it pronounces « ga » AUDIO ; an –e transforms the pronounciation : « gea » is pronounced « ja » AUDIO.
But we drop this –e with nous and vous.

Je mangeais

Je dirigeais

Tu mangeais

Tu dirigeais

Il mangeait

Il dirigeait

Nous mangions

Nous dirigions

Vous mangiez

Vous dirigiez

Ils mangeaient

Ils dirigeaient

Translate in English :
1. Le roi avait une importante réunion.
2. Elle l’aimait beaucoup.
3. A suivre…

Conjugate the following verbs at the imparfait tense with the indicated pronoun :
1. Aimer (il)
2. Changer (tu)
3. Nager (elles)
4. Voyager (nous)
5. Partir (vous)

Voyager : to travel

Answers
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