On the Farm — A la ferme by Dawn-Michelle Baude, Ph.D.
In the French countryside, you can see a lot of animals on farms. Animals like sheep and cows are raised for both meat and cheese. Pigs are raised for pork, but also to do some important work — finding very special mushrooms, called truffes, that pigs are able to smell more easily than dogs can. And many French farms have horses and chickens, too.
Here's a list of common farm animals:
English |
French |
a horse |
un cheval/des chevaux |
a goat |
une chèvre/des chèvres |
a sheep |
un mouton/des moutons |
a pig |
un cochon/des cochons |
a goose |
un oie/des oies |
a chicken |
un poulet/des poulets |
a rooster |
un coq/des coqs |
Let's Feed the Animals — Nous allons nourir les animaux
Farm animals eat simple things. They eat du blé (“wheat”), du foin (“hay”), des grains (“grains”) and de l'herbe (“grass”). You remember the verb “to eat,” manger, from previous chapters, don't you? So, if you want to say that “the horse eats hay” in French, you write, Le cheval mange du foin.
Let's see if you can fill out the blanks in the following French sentences. If you need help remembering the conjugation map for manger or boire, check them out in Chapter 6.
Les poulets mangent.
Le cochon du blé.
ne mange pas de grains.
mange.
ne boivent pas.
Le coq boit.
Put It in the Past — Mets-le au passé
You know how to say you saw something in the past, right? You saw above that you use le passé composé. You use Je + conjugated avoir + vu.
Now guess how you say that an animal ate something yesterday? You're right — you use le passé composé. Only this time, instead of using the past participle vu, you use the past participle mangé.
So to say, “the cow ate the grass,” you say La vache a mangé l'herbe. Or if you mean “the horses ate the grass” in French, you write, Les chevaux ont mangé l'herbe.
Since you're doing so well, let's try to put your “to drink” verb, boire, in the past, too. So this time, instead of using vu or mangé, you put bu in the passé composé formula. “The sheep drank water,” is Les moutons ont bu de l'eau. And “the rooster drank water” is Le coq a bu de l'eau.
FUN FACTS Pour s'amuser
Animals make different sounds in different languages. In French, a pig says gronk-gronk, a duck coin-coin, a rooster cocorico, a cow meuh, a sheep bêê-bêê, a cat miaou, and a dog woua-woua.
Time to practice the passé composé using your new verbs. Write six sentences here with vocabulary words from this chapter and the passé composé forms of mangé, bu, and vu:
