Language/French/Grammar/Weather-verbs

Weather verbs

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Impersonal verbs

Most verbs are personal: they must be conjugated to different persons, such as:

• "manger" (to eat): je mange (I eat), tu manges (you eat), etc.

However, some verbs are used impersonaly, meaning they only have one conjugation, the third person singular.

• we can say "Il pleut". However, we cannot say "Je pleus".

Impersonal weather verbs

The best-known group of impersonal verbs describe the weather:

French	Translation
II pleut (beaucoup)	It's raining (a lot)
Il mouille (coloquial)	It's raining a lot
Il pleut des cordes	It's raining cats and dogs
Il grêle (beaucoup)	It's sleeting (a lot)
Il neige  (beaucoup)	It's snowing (a lot)
Il vente  (beaucoup)	It's (very) windy
Il tonne (beaucoup)	There's (a lot of) thunder
Il bruine (beaucoup)	It's drizzling (a lot)

Impersonal use of the verb "faire"

The weather conditions can be expressed by an impersonal use of "faire" followed by an adjective or a noun:

French	Translation
Il fait (très, trop) beau	Weather is (very, too) good
Il fait (très, trop) mauvais (Il fait un mauvais temps) / Il fait moche (coloquial)	Weather is (very, too) bad
Il fait soleil	It's sunny
Il fait (très, trop) chaud	It's (very, too) hot
Il fait (très, trop) lourd	The weather is (very, too) oppressive
Il fait (très, trop) sec	It's very (very, too) dry
Il fait (très, trop) humide	It's very (very, too) humid
Il fait du brouillard	It's foggy
Il fait de l'orage (orageux)	It's stormy
Il fait un froid de canard	It's very cold
Il fait du vent (il faut beaucoup de vent)	It's windy (it's very windy)
Il fait (très, trop) bon	it's nice out

Video: How to talk about the weather in French / la météo en francais / FRENCH LESSON - A1 lesson

How to talk about the weather in French. How to say it's sunny, it's windy, it's cloudy, it's raining / the weather, the weather forecast in French: it's sunny, it's bad, it's cloudy / what's the weather like in French.

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Video - comptine pour enfants (nursery rhyme) : "Il pleut il mouille"

Children know how to use impersonal verbs like in this rhyme: "il pleut, il mouille, c'est la fête à la grenouille" (it's raining, it's wet, it's a frog party). 😄

We can use the traditional verb, “pleuvoir”, as well as the transitive verb, “mouiller”. The latter is used more colloquially, and it indicates greater intensity of rain.

Other Chapters

Table of Contents

Nouns

• Types
• Gender
• Plural

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Determiners

• Articles
• Typical use of the definite article
• Typical use of the indefinite article
• The partitive article: du, de l', de la, des
• Use of indefinite and partitive articles after the negative forms ne... pas, ne... jamais, ne... plus, ne... guère
• Omission of the article
• Demonstrative determiners
• Possessive determiners

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Personal and impersonal pronouns

• Subject pronouns
• Object pronouns
• Stressed pronouns
• Demonstrative pronouns
• Possessive pronouns

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Adjectives

• Adjectives modifying the noun
• Adjectives which follow verbs or verbal expressions
• Adjectives with complements
• Indefinite and negative noun phrases with adjective complements
• Adjectives used as nouns
• Adjectives used as adverbs
• Masculine and feminine forms of adjectives
• Plural forms of adjectives
• Adjective agreement with nouns
• Invariable adjectives
• Compound adjectives
• Comparative and superlative forms of adjectives
• Subjunctive versus indicative in clauses dependent on a superlative adjective
• Absolute use of the superlative

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Adverbs

• Function of adverbs
• Formation of adverbs with the ending -ment
• Adjectives used as adverbs without addition of -ment
• Phrases used as adverbs
• English and French adverb formation
• Types of adverbs
• Location of adverbs

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Numbers, measurements, time and quantifiers

• Cardinal numbers
• Ordinal numbers
• Fractions
• Some differences in the use of cardinal and ordinal numbers in French and English
• Measurements and comparisons
• Dates, days, years
• Clock time
• Money
• Quantifiers

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Verb forms

• Conjugations
• Easy ways of generating some parts of the paradigms
• Changes in the stem form of some -er conjugation verbs
• Verbs whose stems end in c- or g-
• Verb paradigms

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Verb constructions

• Relations between verbs and their complements
• Intransitive constructions
• Directly transitive verbs
• Indirectly transitive verbs
• Ditransitive verbs
• The passive
• Pronominal verbs
• Impersonal verbs
• Verbs which take noun + adjective or noun + noun complements

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Verb and participle agreement

• Subject-verb agreement
• Agreement of the past participle with the subject of être
• Agreement of the past participle of verbs conjugated with avoir with a preceding direct object
• Agreement of the past participle of pronominal verbs in compound tenses

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Tense

• The present
• The past
• The future
• Other tenses indicating the time at which events occur relative to other events
• Combining tenses
• Tenses in direct and reported descriptions of events
• Tenses with si

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The subjunctive, modal verbs, exclamatives and imperatives

• The attitude of the subject to events: the subjunctive
• The use of devoir, pouvoir, savoir, falloir
• The French equivalents of the English modal verbs: 'would', 'should', 'could', 'may', 'might', 'ought to', and 'must'
• Exclamatives
• Imperatives

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The infinitive

• Introduction: what are infinitives?
• Infinitives as complements to other verbs
• Verbs which take infinitive complements without a linking preposition
• Verbs which take infinitive complements preceded by the preposition à
• Verbs which take an infinitive complement preceded by de
• Omission of objects before infinitives
• Infinitives as complements to adjectives
• Infinitives as complements to nouns
• Infinitives in subordinate clauses
• Infinitives as polite commands
• Quick-reference index to verbs taking infinitive complements

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Prepositions

• Introduction
• Prepositions listed alphabetically from à to vers
• French translations for common English prepositions

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Question formation

• Introduction
• Yes/no questions
• Information questions
• Order of object pronouns in questions involving inversion
• Order of negative particles in questions involving inversion
• Use of question words and phrases: qui?, que?, quoi?, quel?, de qui?, avec combien de? etc.
• Indirect questions

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Relative clauses

• Introduction
• Use of relative qui
• Use of relative que
• Preposition plus qui
• Use of lequel in relative clauses
• Use of dont, de qui, duquel/de laquelle/desquels/desquelles
• The use of où as a relative pronoun
• Use of relative quoi
• Free relative clauses and the use of ce qui, ce que, ce dont, ce à quoi, ce sur quoi, etc.
• Translating 'whoever', 'whatever', 'wherever', 'whenever', 'however'
• Indicative and subjunctive in relative clauses

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Negation

• Introduction
• Location of sentence negators
• Order of negators in multiple negation
• Omission of ne in sentence negation
• Order of negative elements in questions and imperatives
• ne... pas
• ne... que
• ne... aucun(e), ne... nul(le)
• ne... jamais
• ne... plus
• ne... guère
• ne... rien
• ne... personne
• ne... ni... ni
• sans used with other negators
• ne used alone

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Conjunctions and other linking constructions

• Introduction
• Coordinating conjunctions
• Subordinating conjunctions
• Conjunctions sometimes confused by English speakers
• Repeated subordinating conjunctions
• Subordinating conjunctions used with infinitive clauses
• après avoir/ être + past participle linking an infinitive clause to a main clause
• Past participle phrases used as linkers
• Present participles and gerunds

Related Lessons

• Verb forms — Introduction
• Indefinite and negative noun phrases with adjective complements
• Easy way of generating the present tense
• Adverb—adjective compounds
• Categories of Nouns in French
• Adjective—adjective compounds
• Coordination of stressed pronouns
• Auxiliaries
• Past Tense
• Compound adjectives involving demi—, nu— and mi—
• Use of stressed pronouns for emphasis
• Use of l'on
• Adverbs ending in —ment derived from the masculine form of an adjective
• Position of object pronouns with infinitives
• Position of object pronouns with imperatives