Avoir: to have Lesson 29 of the french course of Mova's primary school: 15 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: the lesson at school .
0 Avoir means "to have": j'ai (I have), tu as, il a and elle a, on a, nous avons, vous avez, ils ont and elles ont - another verb you learn by heart, a sneeze and a hiccup: "zhay, tu A, ee-LA". 1 French uses avoir for lots of things English says with "to be": you have hunger (j'ai faim), thirst (j'ai soif), fear (j'ai peur) and years (j'ai dix ans). 2 Picture a holiday cottage in France at night: a huge spider runs across the floor, you jump on the bed and shout "J'ai peur !" - and your French friend laughs, "Il y a une araignée !", there's a spider! 3 Il y a means "there is" or "there are", for one thing or for many: il y a un chat, il y a trois chats. 4 Be careful with two pairs: ils ont (they have, with a buzzing z) and ils sont (they are, with a hissing s); and a with no accent means "has", while à with an accent means "to" or "at". 5 Avoir (to have): j'ai, tu as, il a, elle a, on a, nous avons, vous avez, ils ont, elles ont; it must be learned by heart. 6 Ils ont (they have) sounds "eel-ZON"; ils sont (they are) sounds "eel SON". 7 Je becomes j' before a vowel: j'ai, j'aime, j'habite; never "je ai". 8 J'ai peur means "I'm scared"; French says "I have fear". 9 J'ai faim means "I'm hungry" and j'ai soif means "I'm thirsty". 10 Tu as un animal ? means "Do you have a pet?"; a good answer is "Oui, j'ai un poisson rouge" (a goldfish). 11 Il y a means "there is" or "there are": il y a un chat sur le lit, il y a trois chats. 12 Nous verbs usually end in -ons and vous verbs in -ez: nous avons, vous avez. 13 Hair and eyes are described with avoir: elle a les cheveux longs, il a les yeux verts. 15 J'ai mal à la tête means "I have a headache"; j'ai mal à + body part says where it hurts. ← previous Être: to benext → Questions and simple sentences↑ back to French This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/29-avoir-to-have/