The Everything Essential French Book

THE
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ESSENTIAL
FRENCH BOOK
All you need to learn French in no time
Bruce Sallee and David Hebert
Avon, Massachusetts
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Contents
Introduction
Pronouncing and Writing French
The Alphabet
Sounds
Liaison, Elision, and Enchaînement
Capitalization
Punctuation Marks
Accents and Diacritical Marks
Using Everyday Expressions
Colloquial, Idiomatic, and Other Useful Expressions
Salutations and Greetings
Numbers and Dates
Developing a Basic Vocabulary
Conjunctions
Basic Words to Memorize
Describing Things and People
Understanding Articles
Discovering French Articles
The Definite Article
The Indefinite Article
The Partitive Article
Using Nouns
Understanding Nouns
Gender of Nouns
Plural Nouns
Forming Present-Tense Verbs
Verb Forms: The Infinitive
Conjugating Verbs in the Present Tense
Idiomatic Expressions with Avoir
The Present Participle
Asking Questions and Giving Orders
Asking Basic Questions
Asking Questions with Interrogative Pronouns
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Using the Interrogative Adjective Quel
Using Interrogative Adverbs
Giving Orders: The Imperative Verb Form
Negating Words and Phrases
Negative Expressions
Responding to Negative Questions
Negative Conjunctions (Neither . . . Nor)
Negative Pronouns
Negative Adverbs
Using Objects, Prepositions, and Pronouns
Direct and Indirect Objects
Prepositions
Subject Pronouns
Object Pronouns
Demonstrative Pronouns
Relative Pronouns
Using Adjectives
Basic Adjective Use
Possessive Adjectives
Demonstrative Adjectives
Understanding Adverbs
Forming Adverbs
Memorizing Adverbs
Adverbial Phrases
Positioning and Using Adverbs
Forming Past-Tense Verbs
English Past-Tense Constructions
The Simple Past Tense: Le Passé Composé
The Imperfect Past Tense: L’Imparfait
The Pluperfect Tense: Le Plus-Que-Parfait
Choosing the Appropriate Past Tense
Idiomatic Expressions—the Recent Past
Using Reflexive Verbs
Understanding Reflexive Verbs
Reflexive Verbs Used Reciprocally
Verbs That Are Always Pronomial
Forming the Future Tense
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