-er verbs in the present: je parle, nous parlons

Parler: cut off -er, add six endings

Nine French verbs out of ten end in -er in the infinitive: parler (to speak), habiter (to live), travailler (to work). They all conjugate the same way, so once you know parler, you know them all. Take the infinitive, cut off -er – what remains is the stem, parl- – and add the ending of the person: -e, -es, -e, -ons, -ez, -ent. That gives je parle, tu parles, il parle, nous parlons, vous parlez, ils parlent. Unlike être and avoir, nothing is irregular here: the stem never changes.

Je parle français et ma mère parle espagnol.I speak French and my mother speaks Spanish.

Four forms, one sound: the silent endings

Look at the sound column again: parle, parles, parle, parlent are all pronounced “parl”. The endings -e, -es and -ent are completely silent – ils parlent does NOT end in the sound of vent or enfant; the -ent is as mute as the -e. Only nous parlons and vous parlez are heard. That is why the pronoun can never be dropped in French, unlike Spanish or Italian: without il or ils in front, “parl” tells you nothing about who speaks. It also means that spelling does a job your ear cannot: tu parles and ils parlent have to be learnt with their letters.

Ils regardent un film et elles écoutent la radio.They (the men) are watching a film and they (the women) are listening to the radio.

J’habite, j’écoute: je shrinks before a vowel

You already know je becomes j’ before a vowel or a silent h: j’habite, j’écoute, j’étudie, j’aime, j’adore. Only je does this – tu keeps its vowel: tu habites, tu aimes. In the plural the liaison appears, exactly as with nous avons: nous habitons sounds “nou-zabiton”, vous écoutez “vou-zécouté”, ils aiment “il-zèm”. Notice the last one: the ending -ent of aiment stays silent, but the s of ils is now heard, so il aime and ils aiment DO sound different – the only case where the ear can tell singular from plural.

J’habite à Nantes et j’étudie l’anglais.I live in Nantes and I study English.

Nous mangeons: the e that keeps the g soft

Manger (to eat) follows the same pattern – je mange, tu manges, il mange, vous mangez, ils mangent – with one spelling detail in the nous form. Before o, a g is hard, as in gare; to keep the soft “j” sound of manger, French writes nous mangeons, with an extra e. The e is not pronounced, it only protects the sound. Every verb in -ger does this: nous voyageons, nous nageons. The rest of the everyday verbs are perfectly regular: travailler, étudier, regarder (to watch, to look at), écouter (to listen to), chanter (to sing), danser (to dance), jouer (to play). Note that regarder and écouter already contain the “at” and the “to”: je regarde la photo, j’écoute la radio, with no preposition.