Tuesday, March 3, 2020
How to Conjugate French Spelling-Change Verbs
How to Conjugate French Spelling-Change Verbs There are two groups of otherwise regular -er verbs that have spelling changes in certain conjugations due to hard and soft consonants and vowels. That is, they are conjugated like regular -er verbs, except for slight spelling variations in certain conjugations in order to maintain soft consonant sounds throughout. They are known as are spelling-change verbs. The Consequences of Orthography These orthographic changes occur because of how hard and soft letters affect pronunciation. The letters  a, o, and u are sometimes called hard vowels while e and i are soft vowels. Certain consonants (c, g, s) change pronunciation according to which vowel follows them. Place the soft vowels e or i after them, and they have a soft sound; place the sometimes hard vowels a, o and u after these consonants and you could get a hard-sounding consonant. The spelling-change verbs follow these rules of orthography. Thus, wherever the g in -ger verbs is followed by a hard vowel like o, it changes to ge to keep the g soft, as in gel. In -cer verbs, wherever the c is followed by a hard vowel, it changes to à § to keep the c soft, as in cell. The Actual Changes: -cer Verbs Generally, for -cer verbs, the  c à § spelling change is found only in the imperative and the nous conjugation of the present tense: lanà §ons. It is also needed in the present participle, lanà §ant, but not the past participle, lancà ©. All verbs that end in -cer undergo this spelling change, including:    annoncer to announce   avancer  to advance   commencer  to begin   dà ©noncer  to denounce   divorcer  to divorce   effacer  to erase   lancer  to throw   menacer  to threaten   placer  to put   prononcer  to pronounce   remplace  to replace   renoncer  to renounce The Actual Changes: -ger Verbs For -ger verbs, the g ge spelling change is likewise found only in the imperative and the present tense nous conjugation: mangeons. It is needed in the present participle, mangeant, but not the past participle, mangà ©. All verbs that end in -ger undergo this spelling change, including:    arranger  to arrange   bouger  to move   changer  to change   corriger  to correct   dà ©courager  to discourage   dà ©mà ©nager  to move   dà ©ranger  to disturb   diriger  to direct   encourager  to encourage   engager  to bind   exiger  to demand   juger  to judge   loger  to lodge   manger  to eat   mà ©langer  to mix   nager  to swim   obliger  to oblige   partager  to share   rà ©diger  to write   voyager  to travel For both types of spelling-change verbs, these slight changes also occur in the following tenses and moods: Imperfect - singular conjugations plus the third person pluralPassà © simple - all conjugations except the third person pluralImperfect subjunctive - all conjugations For both, there is no spelling change in the conditional, future, or subjunctive. See the Full Conjugations to Understand Check out the full conjugations of spelling-change -ger verbs and -cer verbs for a global picture of how these small changes affect spelling. One caveat: Do not confuse spelling-change verbs with stem-changing verbs. They are completely different, as their names indicate.
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