Language/French/Grammar/il-or-ça-with-impersonal-verbs

il or ça with impersonal verbs

Some impersonal verbs and verbal expressions have il as subject in written French, but il or ça may occur in spoken French; ça is used in informal styles. Some weather verbs behave in this way:

• Il pleut, ça pleut

It's raining

• Il neige, ça neige

It's snowing

• Il gèle, ça gèle

It's freezing

• Il limine, ça bruine

It's drizzling

• Il/ça se peut que la carte soit démagnétisée

Perhaps the card has lost its magnetism

• Il/ça n'empêche pas qu'elle ait raison

That doesn't stop her from being right

• Il/ça suffit de voir ce qui se passe

You only have to see what's happening

Don't miss the chance to check out these pages as you wrap up this lesson: Possessive determiners, Omission of the article, The irregular verb avoir & The French Alphabet.

Other Lessons

• Marked use of tu
• Adjectives modified by adverbs and prepositional phrases
• Common quantifiers
• Agreement of past participle if direct object is placed before
• Adverbs ending in —ment derived from the masculine form of an adjective
• Plurals
• Categories of Nouns in French
• Infinitives
• il or ça alternating with noun phrase subjects
• Pronominal verbs, the auxiliary “être” and the agreement of the past participle
• Verbs with intransitive and transitive uses
• Masculine and feminine forms of adjectives — A change in written, but not spoken
• Gender
• Relative pronouns
• Adjectives with complements