chapter 17 is about French Lesson Project Management – and here it is! Becuase of this, the best way to enjoy this is to read this lesson and listen to the full audio book here at the same time
Follwoing on from the previous lesson, finishing project’s and how to communicate confidently so you can learn French Lesson Project Management and impress your friends.
- “a project”: « un projet »
Example sentence
“I finish each project on time.”
« Je finis chaque projet à temps. »
Breakdown
- « je finis »: “I finish”
So, the infinitive is “TO FINISH”: « FINIR ».
« FINIR » is a second group verb because it ends with « -IR », and its gerund ends with « -issant ».
Let’s conjugate it:
FINIR – TO END/TO FINISH (present)
| Je fin-is | I finish |
| Tu fin-is | You finish |
| Il/Elle fin-it | He/She finishes |
| Nous fin-issons | We finish |
| Vous fin-issez | You finish |
| Ils/Elles fin-issent | They finish |
- “each”: « chaque »
“each” and « chaque » are both invariable words, meaning they don’t change whatever their form, singular or plural, masculine or feminine. We’ve seen that before. All English adjectives are invariable, which is very simple, but in French their gender and number need to be matched with the nouns.
- “on time”: « à temps »
There’s another expression in English which says “in time”, and it‘s slightly different, but it’s still « à temps » in French.
Quick tip: “TO TERMINATE”
“TO TERMINATE” as a synonym of “TO FINISH”
Be careful, false friend alert!
“TO TERMINATE” is not « TERMINER ». “TO TERMINATE” is to put an early end to something; “TO KILL” a contract, a project. That would be in French « RÉSILIER »: “TO RESILIATE”.
- « TERMINER » is not “TO KILL”, but “TO COMPLETE”. It’s neutral, not negative.
Grammar point: The present perfect in French
- “I finish”: « je finis »
What about “I am finishing”? How do I say this?
Well you also say « je finis », because the present perfect does not exist in French, there’s only one present.
So, if you really need to mention an ongoing action, you will use « en train de ».
“I am finishing the project”: « Je suis en train de finir le projet ».
As a result, It’s like the very old and formal English, “in train”, meaning “underway”, for example you could say an “an investigation is in train”.
But in French, it’s very normal and very frequent to say « en train », e.g. « Je suis en train de faire »: “I am doing”.
And that was the French Lesson Project Management – even if Adele is not impressed. Of course, if you would rather ask for dirctions in French, you can always go here instead.
This is reminds me that a great way to learn French for free is to use resources for your Frnech lessons like this one over here.
