Before we start looking at the finer details of French grammar, allow me to briefly explain what we’ll be covering to familiarise you with the concepts.

If your English classes were anything like mine, you won’t have tackled past/present/future tenses too much, nor a lot of other basic language information that French children learn at primary school.

None of this will be hard to understand in the sense that algebra is hard to understand, I promise, but you may be worried that none of it is sticking in your memory. For that I recommend that you look over this list to refresh your memory once every few months and constantly be on the look out for examples of each point when taking in French. In order to help with this, I’ll be linking to each relevant point every time I post some new resources.

When? Tenses
These are how you express when something happened in French and English alike. So the past tense in English is “I said” and not “I’m saying”, which is present tense as it’s something happening in the present.  In French the past and present tenses are very easy to make, it involves remembering word-endings (suffixes) and tagging them on to your words as you speak.

The future tense, “I will say at 10pm” is how you communicate that something is going to happen. There’s a really easy way to do this in French, which you’ll find in the post on future tense, and there’s also a way involving remembering word-endings (suffixes).

Imagine a timeline with past on the left, present in the middle and future on the right. We’ll add a few more tenses to the line in other posts, but the basic line has three tenses on it.

Who? I, you, he…
Posts on how to say who the sentence is referring to can be found in the index. Ways to say I, you, he, she, we, you (plural i.e. ‘you guys’) and they, plus my, your, his, hers, our, theirs. It’s very simple and works just like it does in English. Once you get the hang of saying who you’re talking, reading or hearing about you’ll be able to understand a lot more of the gist of conversations as you can then make educated guesses in your head as to what that friend of your neighbour’s cousin was doing with his aunt twice removed.

Where? Behind you!
Words for positioning things in French can be useful in cases of emergency (for example, “where’s the cake?”) and I will teach these using diagrams and visual examples that help the words stick in your mind. You’ll be giving and taking directions in no time. Or brushing up on what you know already, I’ll try to give you some words you’ve not seen before. As always, if you have any burning questions that won’t stop nagging you, let me know via the comments and I’ll do my best to help out.

Sounds
There are a fixed number of sounds in French and I will teach you them all as quickly and thoroughly as I can – that means I won’t waste time going over K, kicking kuh when the letter works exactly the same in both English and French – I’ll focus on the differences and teach you how to spot and use them.

Vocabulary
There are different sets of vocab for every activity you can think of. Mostly based on the equipment used but also on the actions that equipment carries out. Fishing, fishing rod, hook, catching etc. are terms specific to fishing. If you never need to go fishing in France then we can avoid that vocab set altogether, but some vocabulary is common throughout the language and I’ll put the most common words used on this site for your reference. From making a complex sentence (but, because, therefore) to words used in everyday working and normal life.

Numbers
In order to live or do business in France having a good grasp of numbers is essential. As a tourist they can still be very useful at a simpler level. This site will host the common ways the French language and culture uses numbers and point out the subtle differences between French and English.

This article is due to be extended. Any requests for information can be made in the comments below.