Kilo Lingo

French · Chapter 20 · Lesson 22 · Themed review

Les vêtements

Getting dressed. porter is to wear as well as to carry, and taille is your size as well as your waist.

Practise this lesson

16-word session

A quick mix of exercises - recognise, recall, type and build each word. Miss one and it comes back round until it sticks.

Worth knowing

Porter is to wear and also to carry

is the verb you need most here, and it does two jobs that English keeps apart: to wear and to carry.

. She is wearing a blue dress. . He is carrying the cases.

Underneath they are the same idea, something supported on the body, and French sees no reason to split them.

Dressing yourself

S' is the act of getting dressed. déshabiller is undressing. Both are reflexive because you are doing it to yourself, which is the same pattern as washing.

is to put on: . is to take off. So is the state and is the moment.

Taille does two jobs too

is your size in clothing and also your waist. That is not a coincidence, and it makes shopping vocabulary easier than it looks: the thing measured and the measurement share a word.

Sizes themselves are European numbers, and shoe sizes in particular do not map neatly onto British ones. pointure is specifically shoe size, which is a distinct word worth having.

Colours after the noun

French puts most adjectives after the noun, and colours always: , . The colour also agrees with what it describes, which produces from .

The exceptions are colours borrowed from objects. Orange and marron do not agree, because underneath they are still a fruit and a chestnut: marron, not marrons.

Trousers are singular

is one item and takes a singular verb, where English insists on plural trousers. The same goes for . If you want a pair of anything in French you generally just say the noun.

Words in this theme

Play these words