The French are world renowned as being very passionate about the film and their film industry, a central point of France's economy and culture.

Ask virtually anyone walking through the streets of France about their thoughts or opinions on film, their favorite movies, or the last time they watched a film, and you will quickly get to meet a range of interesting people and find yourself deep in French conversation. For this reason, knowing a few words and being able to talk a little about film in French is a great tool as this is a good opportunity to practice your French speaking with native speakers.

For starters you need to know the basics. Below are a few words you will commonly use when discussing your film interests. The soundings of many of these French words also give you a reasonable indication of what the word means in English.

actors: comediens
actresses: comediennes
adventure: adventure
animated films: dessins animes
best film: meilleur film
best screenplay: meilleur scenario
Cannes film festival: le festival de Cannes
Cesars: the Cesars (French version of the Oscars)
crime: policier
comedy: comedie
director: le metteur en scene (literally-a putter in stage)
Golden Palm: La Palme d'Or (honorable prize at the Cannes film festival)
movie: le film
movie theater: le cinema

A Quick French Movie Phrase

- 'Et maintenant, le moment que nous attendons tous: le Cesar du meilleur metteur en scene.' - And now, the moment we have all been waiting for: the Oscar for the best director....

As mentioned earlier, the cultural and language trends are often very similar between the French and English. this make it reasonably simply to learn the language, the transition or conversion from English to French is really quite intuitive. In regards to the above French sentence, if I told you that 'maintenant' is 'now' in French, it would be easy to understand what was being said.

Below are some more French sentences about film. Read the French sentence first, see if you understand what is going on and being said, then see if you were correct with the English translation.

-'Avez-vous vu (voo) le dernier (dare nee ay) film de Spike Jones?'
- Have you seen the last Spike Jones film?

- 'Oui, j'ai beaucoup aime le scenario, mais pas la mise en scene.'
- Yes, I really liked the screenplay, but not the direction.

- 'Est'ce que le film passe en VO ou en VF?'
- Is the film in the original language version or dubbed into French? (VO is an abbreviation for Version Originale and VF means the Version Francaise.)

- 'Heureusement (uhr uz mehn), en VF. Je ne comprends (com prahn) pas Anglais tres bien.'
- Happily, dubbed into French. I don't understand English very well.

You may notice that the first two conversations above are spoken in the past tense. In France it's actually more common to converse in the past tense than present or future, the past tense is used more so than in most other languages. If you look to the French verb tenses lesson (http://learnerfrench.com/french_verb_tenses.php)on my learn French site, you will see that the past tense is also the most basic, easy to learn conversational tense. Just take the verb 'avoir' and use it with the past participle to form the past tense.

Although forming the past participle for French verbs is done differently for each verb, if you are using 'regular' verbs, the ending will remain consistent.

'er' verbs: remove 'er' from the infinitive and add 'e'
'ir' verbs: remove 'ir' from the infinitive and add 'i'
're' verbs: remove 're' from the infinitive and add 'u'

Parler(speak): parle
Remplir(fill): rempli
Entendre (hear): entendu

Go back to the second conversation we covered, 'Oui, j'ai beaucoup aime le scenario'. See how the verb 'aimer' (to like) is an 'er' verb, here we removed the 'er' and added 'e', so it became 'j'ai aime le scenario'.

Of course, since we liked it very much, we have to insert 'beaucoup' to the middle. (In the case of the 'er' verbs, however, both the infinitive and the past participle end up sounding similar, despite the fact that the spelling is different. In this case, an 'ay' sound is achieved by the 'er' and 'e' endings.

See if you are able to take the following short sentences and create the past tense using 'ir' and 're' verbs.

'J'ai rempli le verre.' I filled the glass
'Il a entendu sa mere.' He heard his mother.

For more examples of how to transform into and converse in the past tense visit my other lessons on speaking French in the past tense.

You will be comfortable with using 'tenses' in English, however when you have already had to deal with learning another language, understanding tenses, how to use tenses, and the small differences between French and English tenses can sometimes be rather challenging. Keep in mind that, for the most part the French and English languages share many of the same language trends. Both the French and English language contain some very complicated tenses, the majority of which we will never even use in our everyday conversation. So for my introductory French lessons, I try and keep things simple and focus mainly on the most common (and useful) tenses.... the present.... the future.... and the past. With my lessons you don't need to know the French names for theses tenses, you simply need to understand at when to use each tense, and at what time the action is taking place.

With the French language, it is the end of a verb that indicates the tense of the word. The endings also depend on whether you're using a regular or irregular French verb. To put it simply, regular verbs always have the same endings, whereas irregular verbs have their own unique endings. Of the regular there are three kinds that you will come accross and become familiar with as your learning continues: "er" verbs, "ir" verbs and "re" verbs.

Visit the 'Learner French' website for more free French lessons, lists of useful French verbs that you can use to practice your language skills, French games, reviews and more.

Pierre Sarkoz
http://learnerfrench.com/learn_french/