Module 3 of 10
What you do
Jobs and studies — and the little word French leaves out.
French does not put un or une in front of a job after être. It is je suis étudiant, not je suis un étudiant — the second one is not wrong so much as odd, the way I am a student person is odd in English. This is one of the few places where the rule is simpler than the English, so take the gift: être plus the bare word, and nothing between them.
Some job words have a feminine form you will hear constantly — étudiante, infirmière, vendeuse — and some do not settle down, with professeur, médecin and ingénieur used for everyone in plenty of places and given feminine forms in others. Say the form you have heard used around you and do not worry about the argument. Finish with Et vous ? every time. It costs two words, it hands the conversation back, and it buys you ten seconds of listening while you assemble your next sentence.
Played by your device’s own French voice. It is a synthetic voice, not a recording of a teacher — close enough to learn the shape of a word, not close enough to copy exactly.
- Je suis étudiantI am a student — said by a man, and with no word for a
- Je suis étudianteI am a student — said by a woman
- Je suis en première annéeI am in first year
- J'étudie l'informatiqueI study computer science
- Je suis ingénieurI am an engineer
- Je suis professeurI am a teacher
- Et vous ?And you? — the cheapest way to keep a conversation moving
- Vous faites quoi dans la vie ?What do you do? — the ordinary spoken way to ask
être + the bare job word, with no un or une. Et vous ? hands the turn back and buys you time to think.