The Château of Saint-Germain-de-Livet
The joy of driving in rural France is that you never quite know what will be around the next corner. On our last trip to Normandy we came across this amazing château, which was a mere 15 km from our holiday home in Tordouet.
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| The château: me photographing the swans ... |
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| ... the swans |
What is most striking are the colours. Red and green bricks, shining white limestone (and, of course, shining white swans), the deep blue of the moat, the intense green of the grass and trees and of course the most spectacular colours leaping out of the many flowerbeds that surround the castle. As we simply stumbled across this delightful surprise, we had to make best use of our mastery of the language (the guide was doing a ‘French only’ session that day). We like to think that we rose to the challenge but it did inspire us to buy English booklet afterwards, just to check that we had understood her every subtle nuance!
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| Some of the spectacular flowers that surround the château |
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| The massive old cider barn (now crumbling) |
In more recent times, the château had belonged to the Riesener family but from the beginning of the 20th century it was the property of the Pillaut family.
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| The moat
Imagine our surprise when, on departure, we saw this sign – crêpes for sale. Who could resist?
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| La crêperie est ouverte |
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| View of the château from the crêperie (and cider barn) |
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| Sheila enjoying a well-earned treat |
Yes indeed, we all agreed that the Castle of Saint-Germain-de-Livet is a little cracker and one that we will return to in the future – but definitely on a non-fasting day.
The Imperfect tense
In Post 8, I covered the perfect tense (le passé composé) and mentioned that it was one of two important forms of the past tense. This post looks at the other form, the imperfect tense (l’imparfait).
But before saying goodbye to the perfect tense, here’s a little bonus tip. I mentioned last time that the majority of verbs used avoir with the perfect tense but a small number of them use être. I didn’t actually provide a complete list of all 16 of these ‘être” verbs but thanks to a suggestion I received this week, I can give you some neat tricks for remembering these verbs – called ‘advent’, ’10 Little Indians’ and ‘Dr & Mrs Vandertramp’.
Remembering the 16 être verbs
Advent
French/English
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French/English
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A: arriver, to arrive
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partir to leave
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D: descendre, to go down
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ascendre, to go up
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V : venir, to come
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aller, to go
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E: entrer, to enter
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sortir, to leave
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N: naître, to be born
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mourir, to die
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T: tomber, to fall
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rester, to stay
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Note that these 12 verbs are arranged into six pairs, each with their opposites – so arriver is the opposite of partir, and so on.
The four remaining verbs not included in the ‘ADVENT’ collection are: retourner (to turn over), revenir (to return), devenir (to become) and monter (to climb).
10 Little Indians
An alternative ‘aide de memoire’, and one that picks up all 16 of the ‘être’ verbs is to sing their past participles to the tune of ‘Ten Little Indians’. Not only may this help you to remember the verbs that take être, but it should also help you to remember their past participles (including the final two irregular ones). The lyrics are:
allé, arrivé, venu, revenu,
entré, rentré, descendu, devenu,
sorti, parti, resté, retourné,
monté, tombé, né et mort.
Dr & Mrs Vandertramp
A mnemonic for the ‘être’ verbs that is popular in the USA is ‘Dr & Mrs Vandertramp’. Ignoring the & symbol, this picks up all 16 verbs.
The imperfect tense
The imperfect tense is used for describing continuous events in the past and in English usually takes the form, ‘I was eating’, ‘she was selling’, and so on.
The principal for forming verbs in the imperfect tense is similar to that for the present and future tenses. First you must find the correct verb ‘stem’ and then add the appropriate endings.
Finding the stem: the safest way of doing this, and one that avoids having to remember a lot of exceptions, is to take the ‘NOUS’ form of the present tense and then knock off the ‘-ONS’. This method works for both regular and irregular verbs with just one exception–ètre–which I’ll explain separately. The table below sets out the method for the three main verb types (–er, –ir and -re) along with a couple of the irregular verbs.
The ‘stem’ for the imperfect tense
Verb type
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Infinitive
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‘Nous’ form
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Stem
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-er
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parler, to speak
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parlons
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parl-
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-ir
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choisir, to choose
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choisissons
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choisiss-
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-re
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vendre, to sell
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vendons
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vend-
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irregular
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aller, to go
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allons
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all-
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irregular
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faire, to do
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faisons
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fais-
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Adding the endings: The corresponding six endings are:
ais, ais, ait, ions, iez, aient.
The one exception, ètre, has as its stem, ét-, but fortunately the endings are as shown above.
Examples:
(a) Tu parlais très doucement.You were speaking very softly.
(b) Je choisissais une nouvelle voiture. I was choosing a new car.
(c) Elle vendait des vêtements au marché. She was selling clothes at the market.
(d) Nous allions à Paris. We were going to Paris.
(e) Il faisait mauvais. The weather was bad.
(f) J'étais très en retard. I was very late.
Ken’s Gems
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It’s all about context
“When we were travelling to France we saw a beautiful chateau."
"Quand nous voyagions en France nous avons vu un beau château."
Within the examples of the two different past tenses above (underlined), there lies a small word which can change its meaning depending on the context in which it’s used. In the above example ‘en’ means ‘to’. In that example it could also mean ‘in’.
En passant (in passing) you could also say, ‘to speak in French’, ‘parler en français’.
However on its own this little word, ‘en’, means ‘of it’ or ‘from it’. It can also mean ‘some’ or ‘any’, ‘some of it/any of it’. For example:
I would like to have some – je voudrais en avoir;
I'm going to buy some – je vais en acheter.
This makes me listen more intently to try to ascertain something that in my own language I take for granted: the context in which words are used.”
Ken
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I’ve put up on YouTube a short video that deals more fully with the imperfect tense:
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