Learn Business French – chapter 19 – How to plan a conference call and also to conjugate the Verb Avoir.
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- “a conference call”:
« une conf call »
- “a conference call”:
Example sentence
“Let’s do a conference call about employee performance at noon.”
« Faisons une conf call sur la performance des collaborateurs à midi. »
Learn Business French
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- “let’s”/“let’s do”: « faisons »
The English is able to use a soft imperative using “let’s” as in “let us do something/see something”.
You’re basically giving an order in a soft way.
There is no such soft imperative in French. So, you have to use the imperative mode to give an order or an instruction: « faisons » is the imperative mode for « FAIRE »: “TO DO”. But we’ll cover it later.
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- “a conference call”: « une conf call »
This is a very peculiar example of a borrowed word from the English, which was changed into a new word that doesn’t even exist in English: « une conf call ».
Notice that it’s feminine because « une conférence » is feminine.
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- “employee performance”: « la performance des collaborateurs ».
Note that « employé » or “employee” does exist but « collaborateur » is more politically correct.
It’s because it seems like you’re erasing the notion of hierarchy.
“to collaborate” is to work together so if you’re “a collaborator”: « un collaborateur », you’re just part of a team.
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- “at noon”: « à midi »
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- “TO DO”: « FAIRE »
« FAIRE» belongs to the third group because its ending is « -RE ». So, what you do is as usual, you remove the ending, you remove « -RE » you get the root « fai- » and you add the regular or less regular endings of the third group.
FAIRE – TO DO (present)
Je fai-s | I do |
Tu fai-s | You do |
Il/Elle fai-t | He/She does |
Nous fais-ons | We do |
Vous fait-es | You do |
Ils/Elles f-ont | They do |
« vous faites » is very irregular. Keep in mind that this is a very common verb, so it is irregular.
One of the golden rules in all languages is that the more common the word, the more distorted it gets, because everyone uses it all the time.