Nom: ______________________________
Classe: __________
Mon ami le dictionnaire
The dictionary can be a wonderful friend in French class, but you have to know how to use it to your
advantage! Google Translate is a machine – whatever you tell it, it translates. It does not actually speak the
language!! Often times translators cannot take into account the context of your sentence or linguistic
differences between languages. Unfortunately, you cannot simply look up a word in your bilingual dictionary
and take the first translation you see. Here are some helpful hints to help you make the most of your
dictionary friend.
1) You already know that nouns in French come in many forms: masculine, feminine, plural, singular, etc. So
you must know the difference! For example, you may not find a dictionary entry for the word serveuse, so you
need to replace the feminine ending -euse with the masculine -eur, and then when you look up serveur, you'll
find it means "waiter," so serveuse obviously means "waitress." Another example would be if you wanted to
look up the adjective verts. The adjective verts is plural, so remove the -s and look up vert, to discover it
means "green."
2) You also know that verbs come originally in the infinitive form. For example you first learned the verb
parler means “to talk”. Your dictionary will not be able to tell you what nous parlons means. You would need
to know that parlons comes from parler and look that up instead. So as another example, when you wonder
what tu sonnes means, you have to consider that sonnes is a verb conjugation, so the infinitive is
probably sonner, sonnir, or sonnre - look those up to learn that sonner means "to ring."
3) Some homonyms can even be two different parts of speech. The English word "produce," for example, can
be a verb (They produce a lot of cars) or a noun (They have the best produce). When you look up the word
"produce," you'll see at least two French translations: the French verb is produire and the noun is produits. If
you don't pay attention to the part of speech of the word you want to translate, you may end up with a big
grammatical mistake in whatever you're writing.
4) The abbreviations are not gibberish! You will see many abbreviations in an entry. Some include n., adj.,
adv., and v. Some of these will be obvious to you (n = noun, adj = adjective, etc.). Some will be more obscure,
for example Sch. is an abbreviation for something having to do with school. The very front of your dictionary
will help you decipher these abbreviations, which are important in helping you find the very best translation
for what you are trying to say.
5) For more information, try looking up a word both ways. For example, if you look up "purple," your
dictionary might offer violet and pourpre as the French translations. When you look up these two words in the
French-to-English part of the dictionary, you'll find that violet means "purple" or "violet," while pourpre means
"crimson" or "red-violet." The English-to-French lists pourpre as an acceptable equivalent to purple, but it isn't
really purple - it's more red, like the color of someone's angry face.
What are they trying to say??
Use your dictionary to try to figure out what these people really wanted to say!
1) Marie odeur la rose.
2) Ma petite amie les choisit pour allumette sa robe.
3) Abe Lincoln est un homme extraordinaire et un bon conducteur.
4) C’est l’endroit où on lave leur tout le corps. – C’est l’averse.
5) Congélation ! Police !
6) Tout le monde gauche.