{"id":52116,"date":"2026-04-28T23:44:52","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T23:44:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/?p=52116"},"modified":"2026-04-28T23:44:53","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T23:44:53","slug":"french-three-verbs-a-learner-might-confuse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/french-three-verbs-a-learner-might-confuse\/","title":{"rendered":"French: three verbs a learner might confuse"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2>Self-tutoring about French: the tutor mentions a situation about which he had to seek reference.<\/h2>\n<p>The following is according to my understanding.<\/p>\n<p>\nIn French, one might hear <em>s&#8217;il te pla&icirc;t<\/em>, which means &#8220;please&#8221; or &#8220;if you please.&#8221; (More about that in a coming post, hopefully.)<\/p>\n<p>\nYet, there are verbs that can sound, or even look similar: <em>plaindre<\/em> (to sympathize), <em>se plaindre<\/em> (to complain) and <em>plaider<\/em> (to plead).<\/p>\n<p>\nSome hints to tell the difference might be as follows: Plaider is regular, so in present indicative it has a d like one might expect: Je plaide, for instance, for &#8220;I plead.&#8221; Plaindre is irregular in a way like craindre, so never has a d except in the infinitive.<\/p>\n<p>Plaire, present indicative, is je\/tu plais, il\/elle pla&icirc;t, nous plaisons, vous plaisez, ils\/elles plaisent.<\/p>\n<p>\nSource:<\/p>\n<p>\nDubois, M-M, Keen, D.J., Shuey, B., Corbeil, J-C, Crocker, L.G. (1983). <em>Larousse&#8217;s French-English Dictionary.<\/em> Pocket Books New York.<\/p>\nJack of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\">Oracle Tutoring by Jack and Diane,<\/a> Campbell River, BC.\n \n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Self-tutoring about French: the tutor mentions a situation about which he had to seek reference. The following is according to my understanding. In French, one might hear s&#8217;il te pla&icirc;t, which means &#8220;please&#8221; or &#8220;if you please.&#8221; (More about that &hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/french-three-verbs-a-learner-might-confuse\/\"> <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">French: three verbs a learner might confuse<\/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":[4214,4215,4213,4216],"class_list":["post-52116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-french","tag-plaider","tag-plaindre","tag-plaire","tag-se-plaindre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52116","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=52116"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52126,"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52116\/revisions\/52126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}