Basic Conjugation Commencer: French Lesson Industrial Process is Chapter 21 of the book Hands Free Business French.
“industrial process”: « le processus industriel »
Basic Conjugation of French Verb Commencer with Example Sentence.
“How can we improve our industrial process? Let’s start with an assessment.”
« Comment pouvons-nous améliorer notre processus industriel ? Commençons par un bilan. »
Breakdown
- “how?”: « comment ? »
That’s very standard. Most of the time, it is going to be translated as « comment ? ».
“CAN” is a modal verb in English. Modal verbs don’t really exist in French. So, it is going to be rendered as « POUVOIR »: “TO BE ABLE TO”.
Let’s conjugate « POUVOIR », third group, the ending is « -OIR ». So, the root is « pouv- », but it’s highly irregular. Let’s conjugate it:
Basic Conjugation of POUVOIR – TO BE ABLE (present)
| Je peu-x | I am able |
| Tu peu-x | You are able |
| Il/Elle peu-t | He/She is able |
| Nous pouv-ons | We are able |
| Vous pouv-ez | You are able |
| Ils/Elles peuv-ent | They are able |
- “we can”: « nous pouvons »
In this case, it is a question so it is inverted: “can we?”: « pouvons-nous ? »
- “TO IMPROVE”: « AMÉLIORER »
First group verb, « AMÉLIORER ».
- “our…”: « notre… »
Remember it is a possessive adjective [Note: the audio incorrectly says “pronoun”], so you need to learn them. Let’s do all 6:
POSSESSIVE ADJECTIVES (masculine/feminine/plural)
| Mon/Ma/Mes | My |
| Ton/Ta/Tes | Your |
| Son/Sa/Ses | His/Her |
| Notre/Notre/Nos | Our |
| Votre/Votre/Vos | Your |
| Leur/Leur | Their |
- “the industrial process”: « le processus industriel ».
« industriel » is transparent and easy, it’s the same word. But « processus » is not “process”.
« process » also exists because, again, business French likes to borrow English words, but the real French word which comes from Latin, is « processus ». You can see the Latin root in the “-us” ending.
- “TO START”: « COMMENCER »
First group, let’s conjugate it:
Basic Conjugation COMMENCER – TO START (present)
| Je commenc-e | I start |
| Tu commenc-es | You start |
| Il/Elle commenc-e | He/She starts |
| Nous commenç-ons | We start |
| Vous commenc-ez | You start |
| Ils/Elles commenc-ent | They start |
- “an assessment”: « un bilan »
French Grammar point: How to make a question in French Lesson Industrial Process.
How do you turn a statement into a question?
There are three different types of questions in French.
You can use an inversion like we did:
- « Comment pouvons-nous ? »
- « Es-tu libre vendredi ? »: “Are you free on Friday?”/ « Es-tu…? »= « Tu es…? »: “You are…?”= “Are you…?”. Hence « Es-tu libre vendredi ? ».
This is the polite formal way of asking a question. If you have to write a question, you will use this.
You may also use the famous « Est-ce que ? »; which literally means “Is it that ?”.
- « Est-ce que tu es libre vendredi ? »: “Is it that you are free on Friday?”
This is a standard question.
And the third way to do this is simply to express a statement with the same words and the same order, just changing your intonation at the end, like in English.
« Tu es libre vendredi ? »: “You free on Friday?”
It is much more common in French. Notice how I raise my voice at the very end. « Tu es libre vendredi ? ». That’s the informal, colloquial, oral way of asking a question around friends and family.
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