Faire: chores, sport and cooking

Je fais, tu fais, il fait: one verb for a hundred activities

Faire covers both English verbs “to do” and “to make”, and it is the verb of every ordinary activity: housework, sport, cooking, shopping, homework. It is irregular, so learn the six forms as they are: je fais, tu fais, il fait, nous faisons, vous faites, ils font. The first three sound exactly the same – the difference is only on paper. Nous faisons is a trap for the eye: the letters ai here are pronounced like the e of je, so you say “fe-zon”, not “fè-zon”. And vous faites is one of only three vous forms in French that end in -tes (vous êtes, vous dites, vous faites), while ils font joins ils ont and ils sont in the tiny -ont family.

Le samedi, nous faisons le ménage ensemble : mon frère fait la vaisselle et moi, je fais la lessive.On Saturdays we do the housework together: my brother does the dishes and I do the laundry.

Faire du, de la, des: sport and hobbies

When faire takes a sport, an instrument or a hobby, the noun comes with the partitive article you already know from food: du before a masculine word, de la before a feminine one, de l’ before a vowel, des before a plural. Je fais du sport, tu fais de la natation, il fait du vélo, nous faisons des promenades. The idea behind it is “I do some of this activity” – nobody does the whole of swimming, only some of it, the way nobody drinks the whole of coffee but du café. One rule follows from that: after a negation, du, de la, des all shrink to de – je ne fais pas de sport, elle ne fait pas de vélo. Careful with football: French says both je fais du football and je joue au football, and the second one is the one you hear at the stadium.

Ma sœur fait de la natation le mercredi, mais elle ne fait pas de football.My sister goes swimming on Wednesdays, but she does not play football.

Faire le ménage: the jobs of the house take the

Housework behaves differently. A job at home is a known, finished thing, so it takes the definite article: faire le ménage (to clean up), faire la vaisselle (to wash up), faire la lessive (to do the washing), faire la cuisine (to cook), faire les courses (to do the food shopping), faire les devoirs (to do the homework). Compare the pair: je fais du sport is an amount of an activity, je fais le ménage is the job itself, the whole of it, the one everybody in the house knows about. A second verb helps here: ranger – to put things back where they belong: je range la cuisine, les enfants rangent leur chambre. And do not confuse les courses (the food shopping) with la course (a race) – the plural is what makes it the shopping.

Le mercredi, les enfants ne font pas de sport : ils rangent la maison et ils font leurs devoirs.On Wednesdays the children do not do any sport: they tidy the house and do their homework.

Qu’est-ce que tu fais ? – asking about the day

The most useful question of the unit is Qu’est-ce que tu fais ? – “what are you doing?” or “what do you do?”, depending on the moment you name: Qu’est-ce que tu fais le samedi ? asks about every Saturday, Qu’est-ce que tu fais ce matin ? asks about this morning only. In quick speech the same question turns round and becomes Tu fais quoi ?, with the question word at the end – very common, very informal, and never used in writing. With vous the form is Qu’est-ce que vous faites ?, and it hides a second, famous meaning: Qu’est-ce que vous faites dans la vie ? is how you ask a stranger what their job is. The answer can use faire again, or simply another verb: Je fais du jardinage / Je travaille à l’hôpital.

– Qu’est-ce que vous faites le dimanche ? – On fait les courses et une promenade avec le chien.– What do you do on Sundays? – We do the shopping and go for a walk with the dog.