{"id":51984,"date":"2026-04-19T02:51:06","date_gmt":"2026-04-19T02:51:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/?p=51984"},"modified":"2026-04-19T02:51:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-19T02:51:08","slug":"french-devoir-and-boire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/french-devoir-and-boire\/","title":{"rendered":"French: devoir and boire"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2>Self-tutoring about French verbs: the tutor compares two French verbs in present indicative.<\/h2>\n<p>The following is according to my understanding.<\/p>\n<p>\nDevoir (to have to) and boire (to drink) are both strongly irregular verbs in French. Yet, it occurred to me that perhaps they are irregular in a similar way. (See <a href=\"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/french-dire-and-lire-present-indicative\/\">my post on dire and lire<\/a> for a little background about this way of thinking.)<\/p>\n<p>\nBoire and devoir rhyme (to me, anyway), but really don&#8217;t have much other reason to be alike: boire is -re, while devoir is -ir. Yet, in the present indicative, they have some obvious similarities. Moreover, the way they are different might even help one with remembering them.<\/p>\n<p>\nBoire and devoir, present indicative, share the same pattern in all but two ways: nous buvons but nous devons, and vous buvez but vous devez.<\/p>\n<p>\nThere are a couple of curiosities:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>The v found in nous buvons and vous buvez, given that boire itself has no v.<\/li>\n<li>The u in both those, for a similar reason.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>\nFor the record, boire: je bois, tu bois, il\/elle boit, nous buvons, vous buvez, ils\/elles boivent.<\/p>\n<p>\nDevoir: je dois, tu dois, il\/elle doit, nous devons, vous devez, ils\/elles doivent.<\/p>\n<p>\nSource:<\/p>\n<p>\nKenney, M., Burville, V., Hickox, B., Hill, J., Potter, C. (1977). <em>Passeport Fran&ccedil;ais 8: Bonne Chance!<\/em> D.C. Heath Canada Ltd.<\/p>\nJack of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\">Oracle Tutoring by Jack and Diane,<\/a> Campbell River, BC.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Self-tutoring about French verbs: the tutor compares two French verbs in present indicative. The following is according to my understanding. Devoir (to have to) and boire (to drink) are both strongly irregular verbs in French. Yet, it occurred to me &hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/french-devoir-and-boire\/\"> <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">French: devoir and boire<\/span> Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[4193,4194],"class_list":["post-51984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-french","tag-irregular-verbs","tag-verb-patterns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51984"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51984\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51993,"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51984\/revisions\/51993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}