French Language Grammer?

Question

In French Language if two vowels come together, first vowel is removed and a apostrophe is used.But iam not able to understand we use" J'ai " but when we use" Tu es " and " Tu as ", " Elle a "we are not removing the first vowel please help to clarify this grammer part which i find confusing.If it is an exception it is not mentioned any were any body can clarify this problem.

Answer 1

Hi there,

You can also use "t'es" and "t'as" but it's used more often when you speak than when you write.

When you conjugate verbs, the ' usually comes only for the je followed by a verb starting with a vowel (and silent h e.g. " j'habite a Paris" -> "I live in Paris").

Answer 2

First, it's not always true the first vowel is removed whenever two vowels come together. For example: ''Une'' is never reduced and nor is ''grande.'' (Grand is masculine)
Second, these are not really exceptions at all. ''Elle'', ''grande'' and ''une'' are spelled with a vowel, but these vowels are never pronounced.
What happens if you take a word that does have a vowel in the end that's pronounced? Take: ''beau'' This word is never reduced to ''b'' or ''bea.''
I think the rule you were taught is all wrong. It would be best to learn which words can be reduced, such as ''de'' ''le'' la'' and ''je'' and be careful with other words..I don't have a whole list of them, sorry.
Good luck!

Answer 3

Even francophones (most Canadians anyway) don't obey the rules and have a nightmare of a time to write properly in their own language. Don't tell them this, but it is a dying one. Spanish is much more popular and necessary in today's world. Comments such as "t'as vu ça hier soir, c'était pas croyable comme c'était beau!" instead of "Tu as vu hier soir! Incroyable c'que c'était beau!" which you would hear from those more educated ones who put the effort in and even bothered to say it right or if you were to travel to France.
Most of the rules are more complicated than not as the moment a king would make a mistake, no one would dare tell him so and made it the exception to the rule. Get it. More and more francophones ignore the rules and speak whichever way they feel like speaking these days. Practise makes perfect, that's the only thing that I know that will truly make you a French Wis. My favorite way to learn a language happen to be the dictionary (of course) and the bible in that language. You can always compare to your own bible in your own language and that's the beauty of it.

Answer 4

it appears to be an exception but good question!

elision or vowel dropping: Some monosyllabic function words ending in a or e, such as je and que, drop their final vowel when placed before a word that begins with a vowel sound (thus avoiding a hiatus). The missing vowel is replaced by an apostrophe. (e.g. je ai is instead pronounced and spelt → j'ai). This gives for example the same pronunciation for "l'homme qu'il a vu" ("the man whom he saw") and "l'homme qui l'a vu" ("the man who saw him").

Answer 5

when the E is muet like elle u dont remove the vowel (ell)
in je the E is not muet jeuuuuuuuuh! then u remove the vowel
le(leuh) oiseau = l'oiseau u remove the vowel
when u pronouce the E u remove it when u dont hear it elle(ell) u leave it.
simple

Answer 6

try to say "je ai." the vowels don't flow very well. it seems to me that this happens when the flow of sounds becomes clumsy and awkward to pronounce. eg: Il m'a dit qu'il t'a vu.
me a is clumsy sounding just as que il and te a
hope this helps

Answer 7

yea i understand where you're comming from. there isn't really a reason for this i don't think , it's just the way it is. i think its because they are the person and they form the tense and are the basis of the sentance. we only put and apostrophe when we say 'of', 'the' i thik thee are the only times when we do that thats isn't really much help, sorry, but thats just how it is, confusing but thats how it is. xxx

Answer 8

actually it is not an exception with J'ai but it is an exception with Tu es etc. with other words also we use this criteria like l'image , l'etudiant.