one question on pronounciation & one on conjugaison

[yong leong]

The first questions is:  "en tous les cas"  I often heard this phrase but it seems the 'les' is not pronounce or is it actually 'en tous cas'?  Please clarify. It means in any case, have I got it wrong ?

The second question is,  in the conjugaison for 'etre'  - Je suis tombé, arrivé, né, passé , revenu; rentré, descendu, mort, devenu, resté, allé, monté..............ecetera; my question is other than all these very common known verbs often quote as example, are there many other verbs that conjugate with 'etre', how many are there? Just a rough figure if you know.

         I need to read a lot in french to get used to this conjugaison. So easily forgotten when you stop using them; or stop seeing them in words. They don't  stick so well in the brain.

[Neil Coffey]

In the first case, it is usually either "en tous cas" (without "les") or "dans tous les cas". As a general rule, "en" is rarely used with an article like "les" (or indeed "mon", "tes" etc), and in such cases would be replaced by "dans".

Regarding your second question: yes, there are a few other verbs that, at least for some speakers/with some meanings, take être. On the main web site, for example, I have this page of less common verbs that take être.

But as you can see, there aren't that many. All in all, including compounds, there's probably something in the order of 40-50 verbs that take être. It's hard to give a precise figure because as you get to, say, compounds of the less common verbs, you reach a point where a word simply isn't common enough to get much of a consensus on its use (e.g. from "trépasser", already a rare verb, you can in principle get "retrépasser"; from "convenir", "reconvenir"-- but have a look on Google at the number of actual instances of these verbs, and you'll see that they're so few that it's difficult to really gather any reliable statistics on their usage).

So as I say, the answer is something like "50-ish, depending on what exactly you count".

[yong leong]

 

       Much obliged for your answer Neil. So there are about 50 of these verbs, in that case  I stand a good chance of getting it wrong  because I don't really know all these 50-ish verbs, if it is only about 5 to 8 then it is OK but 50 that seems a lot even though they are not commonly or often use.

        From now on I have to make an effort to notice those verbs when I read them, hopefully I can notice them in print, listening will be a lot more difficult to be aware that those verbs are from the 50-ish verbs that conjugate with 'etre'.  At least now I know where the difficulty is.

[Neil Coffey]

Well, there's no need to be quite so paranoid as it turns out.

There are 10-15 common ones (basically, the list Erwan has given below), plus compounds of those verbs, plus then a handful of uncommon verbs and their compounds. Many of the uncommon verbs (e.g. "éclore") are extremely uncommon-- I imagine you could quite easily read hundreds of newspapers from cover to cover and not come across them.

[Sarah]

Hi !

(In advance sorry for my bad english, i'm french ^^)

For the first question, the good phrase is "en tous les cas", the others are abreviations or... bad pronounciation XD.

For the second question, "être" is the most used verb in the french language. According to the register of language (familiar, common, or steady (even old french)), so many verbs of "actions" or "adjectives" are used with the verb "être".

So... i can't give you a number, there so many !

I hope that help you a little ^^

[Erwan]

Here is a list (found on the web) of verbs using être. I'm not sure it's an exhaustive list, but it's a start.

naître,

mourir,

descendre(in some cases),redescendre(in some cases),

monter,remonter(in some cases),

venir, advenir, revenir, survenir,convenir,

aller,

arriver,

sortir(in some cases), ressortir(in some cases),

partir, repartir,

entrer, rentrer(in some cases),

tomber,

rester,

and, of course, all the pronominal verbs. e.g.  se cacher, se retirer,...