3.7 Irregular verbs II — pouvoir, vouloir, devoir, savoir — Epoché
What you will be able to do Write the present of the four verbs that say what is possible, what is wanted, what is required and what is known, and put a bare infinitive after each of them. Choose correctly between the two French verbs for knowing, which English handles with one word and which French keeps apart. Make a polite request with the conditional of the verb for wanting, and know why the plain present sounds blunt in a shop or a restaurant. See why these four are not modal verbs in the English sense at all, and why that is good news rather than bad. Sentences from this lesson, before the explanation. Read the French aloud; all of them come back below. French English Je peux. [1] I can. Il peut venir. [2] He may come. Nous pouvons aller. [3] We can go. Vous pouvez. [4] You can. Ils peuvent aider. [5] They can help. Prerequisites : 3.6 — you should be able to put a bare infinitive straight after the verb for going, because the verbs in this lesson take the same construction, and be comfortable with a verb having two stems and a boundary between them. Four more irregular verbs that do the same kind of work: they say something about another verb rather than about the world. English has can , will , must , may , should for this, and English speakers expect the French ones to behave alike. They do not, and that is the most useful thing in this lesson. English modals are crippled verbs. No infinitive: you cannot say to can . No participle: there is no musted . No third person ending: she can , never she cans . For the missing forms English borrows — be able to , have to , be allowed to . The four French verbs are ordinary, complete verbs, with infinitives, participles, every tense and person. Their meanings line up roughly with the English modals; their grammar is far simpler. Four complete verbs, not four defective ones Consider what that buys you. English cannot put must in the past, so it swaps in another construction; French conjugates the same verb into the past. For has been able to , French uses the perfect of the verb for being able, like any verb. For would like , French uses the conditional of the verb for wanting — the same device English hides behind a different verb. And all four take a bare infinitive directly, with nothing between — the pattern from the verb for going, unchanged. There is one way of joining a governing verb to a governed verb, and once you know it you know it. The verb for knowing is not modal in meaning, but with a bare infinitive it means knowing how to do something — often English can . So two French verbs compete for can : the verb for knowing is about a learned skill; the verb for being able covers ability in general, circumstance and permission. If you can swim because you learned to, the verb for knowing is the usual choice. If you can swim because the pool is open, use the verb for being able. Table Four paradigms. The first three share a shape: a short stem in the two forms with audible endings, a fuller one in the singular, and a third person plural of its own. Person pouvoir , to be able to 1 sg je peux 2 sg tu peux 3 sg il peut 1 pl nous pouvons 2 pl vous pouvez 3 pl ils peuvent Person vouloir , to want 1 sg je veux 2 sg tu veux 3 sg il veut 1 pl nous voulons 2 pl vous voulez 3 pl ils veulent Person devoir , to have to 1 sg je dois 2 sg tu dois 3 sg il doit 1 pl nous devons 2 pl vous devez 3 pl ils doivent Person savoir , to know 1 sg je sais 2 sg tu sais 3 sg il sait 1 pl nous savons 2 pl vous savez 3 pl ils savent Look at the first three together. Each has a short, plain stem in the first and second person plural — the two cells with audible endings — and a fuller stem in the three singular cells. The third person plural is built on a third shape. So these are three-stem verbs: the four-against-two split of the last lesson, with the third person plural pulled out of the four. That extra split is common among irregular verbs. The verb for knowing is the outlier in the easy direction: it has the ordinary short singular endings and the ordinary plural endings, and its third person plural simply keeps the plural stem, with no third shape. Only the singular stem, sai- , is odd. Verb Stems · the boundaries pouvoir three — one for the singular, one for the two audible-ending cells, one for the third person plural vouloir three — the same three-way split, with the same vowels in the same places devoir three — the same split again, so learn these three as one pattern savoir two — sai- in the singular, sav- in the whole plural; no third shape How to read the endings The first two verbs end their first person singular in a letter you have not yet seen at the end of a verb, and it is silent, like nearly all final consonants. The other two have the ordinary short singular endings. In all four, the three singular forms sound identical and the pronoun carries the information. The singular of the first two verbs contains a vowel English does not have — a rounded vowel made with the tongue forward, of the kind the sound volume drilled. Beginners substitute the vowel of boot , which is intelligible but immediately foreign. The vowel of boot is in fact the one you want in the two audible-ending cells of those verbs, so the singular-plural pair is a good place to practise the contrast. The third person plural of the first three verbs is neither the singular stem nor the plural one. Say the third person singular and plural of the first verb one after the other: the vowel shifts and the final consonant becomes audible. Singular and plural are unmistakably different in speech, as in group two. The ending is the silent one you have known since lesson 3.3. Finally, the practical listening point. These verbs are among the most frequent words in spoken French, and frequent words get compressed. The first half of the negative is routinely dropped before them, and the first person pronoun fuses with the verb into what sounds like one word. Train on them in whole phrases