Chapter 42 is a French Lesson Scheduling Interviews to get you started on your career.
Discussing job interviews and scheduling them is a great skill and being able to communicate is even better! here you’ll learn do say a simple sentence to help you out.
- “an interview”: « un entretien »
Example sentence
“Let’s schedule your job interview on Monday, if you can’t, I need to push it to Wednesday.”
« Programmons votre entretien d’embauche lundi, si vous ne pouvez pas, je dois le décaler à mercredi. »
Breakdown
- “TO SCHEDULE”: « PROGRAMMER », as in “TO PLAN”.
Do you remember how “a plan” was usually « un programme »?
- “a schedule”: « un emploi du temps » (literally “the use use your time”)
- “a job interview”: « un entretien d’embauche »
“an interview” is « un entretien », and « embauche » means hiring. So « un entretien d’embauche » is literally “a hiring interview”
- “Monday”: « lundi »
Let’s do all seven days:
LES JOURS DE LA SEMAINE – THE DAYS OF THE WEEK
| Lundi | Monday |
| Mardi | Tuesday |
| Mercredi | Wednesday |
| Jeudi | Thursday |
| Vendredi | Friday |
| Samedi | Saturday |
| Dimanche | Sunday |
- “if you can’t ”: « si vous ne pouvez pas »
“if” is « si », “you” is « vous », “cannot”: « ne pouvez pas »
- “TO PUSH ASIDE”: « DÉCALER »
“to push a meeting to”: « décaler une réunion à »
So you “push to Wednesday”: « décaler à mercredi ».
Quick tip: Days
You will say on Monday” in English. But we usually say « lundi » and not « à lundi ».
« à lundi » means “see you on Monday ”.
Dates in French, like in English, use the article « le » except when referring to a day within the next seven-day period.
For example, if I’m talking about this Wednesday and we’re Monday, I’m going to say « je le ferai mercredi » instead of « je le ferai le mercredi » (“I will do it on Wednesday”). Also in the past you don’t use any article, e.g. « lundi dernier : “last Monday”.
However if you’re referring to a specific date, e.g. “Monday the 22nd” you will say « le lundi 22 ».
Also days are written in lowercase in French, like months.
Grammar point: The imperative mode
We used “let’s” again, “let’s schedule: « programmons ». This is imperative, a new mode. Why is it used? It’s used to give an order or an instruction.
The way it works is very simple, it only has three different forms instead of 6. For example, « PROGRAMMER » is a first group verb. So let’s remove the « -ER » ending, keep the root « programm- » and add the new imperative endings to the three persons used in the imperative: the second one, the fourth one and the fifth one. Let’s do it:
PROGRAMMER – TO SCHEDULE/PROGRAM (imperative present)
| Programme | Schedule/Program (You) |
| Programmons | Let’s schedule/program (We) |
| Programmez | Schedule/Program (Formal or plural You) |
Reminder
“Let’s” is a soft imperative but there is no such thing in French. So we have to use the strong imperative.
We could have used a strong imperative in English too. Instead of “let’s schedule”, we could have said “schedule”. In both cases, the French is “programmons”.
If yo love learning French as much as we do, where it be French Lesson Scheduling interviews, or attending courses to learn more, just keep going. Here is a site we love, that has so much reading material you can learn from. Check this out.
Or if you want to practice your Business french and study the language used in meetings, have a look at this other lesson here.