You may know the French expression faire attention meaning ‘to be careful’. But do you know less formal faire gaffe? It, too, means to pay attention or be careful, even to watch out. and this is exactly what we want you to do with these common faux pax* which are easy to avoid once you’re aware of them.

ABSOLUTE BEGINNER

We’ve spoken about apostrophes before but it bears repeating. Ignore them! Same goes for the letter ‘h’, which is always silent in French.

What we often hear at Lingua Franca: Je habite
What we’d love you to say: J’habite* (sounds a bit like: juh-beet)

BEGINNER

Lingua Franca Chouchous* are a happy lot en général* and often want to tell us they’ve had a good time. Unfortunately a word-for-word translation doesn’t cut la moutarde* in this instance.

What we often hear at Lingua Franca: J’ai eu un bon temps.
What we’d love you to say: J’ai passé un bon moment*.

INTERMEDIATE

The phrase il y a is nothing if not versatile. It can mean: ‘there is’, ‘there are’, ‘is there?’, ‘are there?’ and even ‘ago’ if placed before a time period.

What can be difficult to grasp when you’re first learning is that the ‘a’ in il y a is in fact a conjugation of the verb avoir*. So when you want to use this expression to indicate the past (the imperfect tense, to be exact), you’ll need to conjugate the verb accordingly.

What we often hear at Lingua Franca: Il y était.
What we’d love you to say: Il y avait*.

ADVANCED

Wouldn’t life be so much more simple if we used the verb visiter (to visit) in every situation? No such luck I’m afraid.

Visiter is certainly used in French, but only for visiting places and things, not people. To say that you visited your parents, for instance, you’d need to employ the phrase rendre visite à (literally ‘to render visit to’).

To break it down a bit, rendre is the verb ‘to give back’, ‘to render’, or more colloquially ‘to make’. It’s a regular -re verb and therefore its past participle is rendu.

Please pay special attention to the next word: visite*. In this phrase, it’s not a verb but a noun. Note, too, that it isn’t preceded by a definite or indefinite article (la* or une*). The good news is that, as a noun, there is absolutely no need to change it to suit the person doing the action or, indeed, the tense.

Lastly, remember to add the preposition à (to) and you’re home and hosed.

What we often hear at Lingua Franca: J’ai visité mes parents.
What we’d love you to say: J’ai rendu visite à mes parents*.

How to Learn French - fais gaffe !