French: irregular verbs: valoir

Self-tutoring about irregular French verbs: the tutor mentions valoir.

The following is according to my understanding.

Valoir means to be worth. It might be as irregular a verb as you get in French. It’s the commonly-used verbs that tend to be irregular, and people seem to like to discuss how much things are worth. For example, “That’s worth five dollars,” might be said as Ça vaut cinq dollars.

To a learner of French, valoir has a few characteristics that might make it stand out. For instance, in present indicative, the je, tu, and il/elle forms don’t sound like the infinitive. Its present indicative conjugation is je/tu vaux, il/elle, vaut, nous valons, vous valez, ils/elles valent.

So, the stem of valoir changes in present indicative. Yet, that’s not all. Its future stem is vaudr- (ça vaudra, for instance).

For someone curious about French, valoir might be worth a look. (Le verbe valoir peut-être vaut un coup d’oeil:)

Source:

Dubois, M-M., Keen, D.J., Shuey, B., Corbeil, J-C, Crocker, L.G. (1983). Larousse’s French-English Dictionary. Pocket Books New York.