3.5 -ir verbs (group 2) — finir and the -iss- stem — Epoché
What you will be able to do Write the whole present tense of finir and of any other verb built on the same pattern, from the infinitive alone. Recognise the syllable -iss- as the signal, in the present tense, that a plural person is being spoken about, and hear it as a piece of grammar rather than as noise. Tell a group-two verb from a group-three verb, which looks identical in the infinitive and behaves quite differently, and know which of the two you are safer guessing. Read the twenty useful group-two verbs off a list and see that a good number of them are built on an adjective, which makes them easy to remember and easy to guess at. Sentences from this lesson, before the explanation. Read the French aloud; all of them come back below. French English Je finis mes devoirs. [1] I'm finishing my homework. Il finit d'écrire le roman. [2] He's finishing up the novel. Finissons ça. [3] Let's end this. Finissez ceci. [4] Finish this. J'aime les livres qui finissent bien. [5] I like books which have happy endings. Prerequisites : 3.4 — you should be able to strip a group-one infinitive and add the six present endings without hesitating, and know which endings you can hear. This lesson reuses that procedure with one extra step in the middle. Lessons 3.3 and 3.4 covered the group that holds nine verbs in ten. This one covers a much smaller group, some three hundred verbs, and it earns its own lesson for two reasons. Its verbs are common: finish , choose , succeed , grow , obey , fill , think it over . You cannot get through a paragraph of ordinary French without meeting one. And it has a mark of its own, a syllable that appears in some cells and not others; understand that syllable and you understand the group. Group two is a very regular thing in the French verb. The numbering of the three groups is traditional rather than logical. Group one is the verbs whose infinitive ends in -er . Group two is a fully predictable set ending in -ir that take the extra syllable. Group three is everything else — including some verbs that also end in -ir but take no extra syllable and are irregular in ways the next two lessons handle one verb at a time. So -ir alone does not put a verb in group two, and that is the one genuine difficulty here. Three groups, and why the second is the easy one Here is the whole of group two. Remove the last two letters of the infinitive to get the stem. For the three singular persons, add the short endings. For the three plural persons, insert -iss- between stem and ending. The pattern is fully determined the moment you know the infinitive. Historically, the extra syllable is a suffix that once marked beginning or becoming, which survived in the plural and wore away in the singular. That explains something about the meanings: a great many group-two verbs are built on an adjective and mean to become that adjective . From red comes blushing; from old, ageing; from thin, losing weight; from big, growing. English has a scattering of these — redden , sharpen , widen , blacken . If you know a French adjective and want the verb for entering that state, the group-two pattern is very often right — one of the few places where guessing is reasonable. Notice too that the extra syllable is absent from all three singular persons. So singular and plural are audibly different — unlike group one, where four of the six forms sound identical and only the pronoun tells you who is meant. Here the shape of the word itself tells you whether the subject is one person or several, whatever happens to the pronoun — one of the first places in the course where French gives back some of the redundancy English speakers rely on. Table Two paradigms, laid out person by person. Read the first one down the page and watch the extra syllable arrive at the fourth row and stay. Person finir , to finish 1 sg je finis 2 sg tu finis 3 sg il finit 1 pl nous finissons 2 pl vous finissez 3 pl ils finissent Person choisir , to choose 1 sg je choisis 2 sg tu choisis 3 sg il choisit 1 pl nous choisissons 2 pl vous choisissez 3 pl ils choisissent The two paradigms are one pattern with a different stem. If you can do the first you can do every verb in the group, and it has some three hundred members. Here, once, are stem, marker and ending in their own columns. After this, learn the forms whole. Person Stem · marker · ending 1 sg fin — none — -is 2 sg fin — none — -is 3 sg fin — none — -it 1 pl fin — -iss- — -ons 2 pl fin — -iss- — -ez 3 pl fin — -iss- — -ent The three plural endings are exactly those of group one, and the third is never pronounced. The singular endings are new, but only two letters each, and two of the three are spelled the same. Twenty verbs of group two Learn them in two blocks: the plain verbs, then those built on an adjective, where the adjective gives you the verb. Verb Meaning · a form to hold on to finir to finish — nous finissons choisir to choose — je choisis réussir to succeed, to pass an examination — elle réussit réfléchir to think something over — je réfléchis obéir to obey — ils obéissent remplir to fill, to fill in a form — vous remplissez punir to punish — il punit applaudir to clap, to applaud — nous applaudissons bâtir to build — ils bâtissent saisir to seize, to grasp — je saisis avertir to warn — je vous avertis fournir to supply, to provide — nous fournissons guérir to cure, to get better — il guérit Built on an adjective From · meaning grandir from grand , big — to grow, to grow up rougir from rouge , red — to blush, to go red vieillir from vieux , old — to grow old, to age maigrir from maigre , thin — to lose weight grossir from gros , fat — to put on weight jaunir from jaune , yellow — to turn yellow salir from sale , dirty — to make dirty, to soil The second block gives you seven verbs for the price of seven adjectives you were learning anyway, and when you meet a new one in reading you can work out its meaning from the adjective inside. English does the same with redden and widen , bu