Collins Paul Noble French booklet.pdf - Centar za edukaciju i ...

You think / You are thinking (inf.) Tu penses
They think / They are thinking Ils pensent
They think / They are thinking Elles pensent
(female group)
The Present
NOTE! As you will recall, the letters “ent” are silent whenever “ent” comes at the end
of a verb that follows “they”, and so pensent is still pronounced “pense” – exactly the
same pronunciation as for the other spellings above.
Therefore, to fi nd the present tense for I, he, she, you (inf.) and they – for verbs ending in
“er” – simply chop off the “r” and pronounce the consonant at the end of the word.
The second step: swap the “r”! – Verbs ending in “er”
Chopping off the “r” above has given us the present tense for everything except you
(formal) and we, which behave slightly differently from the others but which are also
extremely straightforward. To work out how to say you think / you are thinking, you
simply copy the sound of “to think”.
to think penser
You think / You are thinking Vous pensez
Although spelt differently, penser and pensez are pronounced in exactly the same
way, so if you know how to say to think, to eat, to speak etc., that means you also know
how to say you think, you eat, you speak etc. They sound exactly the same, the only
difference being in the spelling, because you swap the “r” at the end for a “z”.
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