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I am sure that at some point during your learning, you have been mid-flow through a sentence or even just on the cusp of starting to say something, and you can’t find the word in French that you want. It happens to us all and it can be very frustrating – and sometimes even a little stressful. This is where we often get stuck; trying hard to think of that French word or phrase that will help us to continue. We can often put ourselves under a lot of pressure trying to work this out and retrieve what we feel we should know, which can have a countereffect and actually make it even harder to remember.
Quite often, a quick ‘fix’ for this will be to find an alternative, possibly simpler, word instead. It may not be the exact word that you want to use but it may be the easiest way to overcome the hurdle and keep your conversation flowing. Don’t forget that, you can take the time later to look up that elusive word at your own leisure and then practise and practise it until it becomes more easily retrievable.
I love a quick simplification but sometimes this isn’t always enough, especially if you become blocked on trying to say a phrase that is not directly translatable from your own language into French. This is where I would suggest a ‘reword’. How can you reformulate what you want to say in your own language first to make it easier to express in French?
A good example to illustrate this is the verb ‘to get’. If English is your mother tongue, ‘get’ and ‘got’ will undoubtedly feature very highly in your everyday speech. However, the verb ‘to get’ doesn’t exist in the same way in French as it does in English. This is where thinking of a different way that you could word your sentence in English first would really help. Here are some ‘get’ and ‘got’ examples that may have already tripped you up!
How would you reword these?
Here are my suggestions 😊
The ‘reword’ has generated 9 different verbs in French to replace ‘get’ or ‘got’! You may not be familiar with all these verbs but hopefully there are some that you feel are easier to translate than the original sentences. (If you would like to try translating these sentences, have a go now before scrolling to the end of the blog where I have added my suggestions).
‘Get’ and ‘got’ are quite specific examples but the principle of the ‘reword’ can be so valuable. I find it is extremely helpful when using questions formations (more about this in a later blog!) and also when using relative pronouns (again more about this soon!).
Can you think of any more examples? Please do share them if you can 🤗!
I hope this helps 😊
Sarah x
