Say can in french

To say "I can wait" , using the verb attendre to wait , this would be je peux attendre. The French for "you can", using the familiar tu form, is tu peux : it turns out that in this case, the actual verb form peux is the same as the je form. So to say "you can come" , in French this would be tu peux venir. The French phrases for "he can" and "she can" are il peut and elle peut : in this case, the final -x changes to a -t in the spelling.

So to say "she can help" , this would be elle peut aider. To say "we can" in writing, the nous form would be nous pouvons. So to say "we can come" , the form would be nous pouvons venir. But remember that in everyday, informal spoken French, nous isn't used very much. Instead, on would be used, and so the usual way to say "we can come" in spoken French would be on peut venir. The vous form, used to say "you can" when talking to several people or when addressing one person formally, would be vous pouvez.

To to say "you can come in" , using the verb entrer , this would be vous pouvez entrer this same sentence could also mean "you can go in" -- the French verb entrer covers both senses. To say "they can" in French, you need to choose between elles the feminine form, used to refer to a group of people who are all female and ils the masculine form, used to refer to an all-male group or a mixture of male and female.

In either case, the actual verb form is peuvent. For example, "they can come" would be either ils peuvent venir or elles peuvent venir. If the subject of the sentence is the name of an actual thing or person i. For example, to say "David can help" , this would be David peut aider ; to say "the computer can help" , this would be l'ordinateur peut aider ; to say "my parents can come" , this time using the plural form of the verb to indicate more than one parent, this would be mes parents peuvent venir.

The French verb pouvoir can be used in a similar way. To do so, we use one of the forms mentioned in the previous section. But we need to make it into a question. So for example, to say "Can you? Forms with est-ce que are also possible, so that "Can you help me? For more details, see the section on how to ask a question in French. The French equivalent to "Can I?

In a similar way to English, this can be used to make a request or to make a suggestion or offer. For example:. For more information about why the word vous comes before aider in the first of these examples, see the section on pronouns.

Note that before a verb beginning with a vowel, puis-je is still written with the final -e , even though it would not actually be pronounced in that case.

As mentioned, French usually expresses "can" in the sense of "have the know-how to" in a slightly different way. In phrases such as "She can swim", "They can speak German", where what is being referred to is know-how rather than physical ability, permission etc, then French tends to use the verb savoir , which literally means to know how to.

The forms of the verb savoir are as follows:. Deciding which of these forms to use essentially works as with pouvoir above and with other verbs. Here, there are two choices of verb. If we mean "can't" in the sense of "doesn't have permission" , then French speakers would usually use pouvoir as before. But in the usual sense of "doesn't know how to" , then savoir would be the usual verb.

As before, the trick is to construct the sentence She can swim and then negate it. Recalling that "She can" in French in the sense of "She knows how to Then, we negate this, to give us Elle ne sait pas nager as the French for She can't swim. Omission of ne when saying "can't" As with negative sentences in general, in relaxed, everyday spoken French, it is common to omit the word ne. So "She can't swim" in informal spoken French would in reality often be Elle sait pas nager.

However, note that an informal form such as this only sounds natural if spoken with some fluency. So to begin with, it is probably advisable to stick to inserting the ne even if it some cases it would be slightly formal or emphatic when used by a native speaker. Put another way: if you insert the ne , nobody will accuse you of "getting it wrong". French grammar index French-English dictionary English-French dictionary.

Difficulties 'le' or 'la'? How do you use 'en'? Subject or object? Negatives: missing out the 'ne' What is the subjunctive? Imperfect tense Imperfect tense: exercises Future tense Future tense: semi-regular forms Conditional Perfect tense Pluperfect tense Past participles Past participle agreements Questions The negative Missing out the 'ne' -eler and -eter verbs Irregular verbs: most common Irregular verbs: how to form Verbs like 'dormir' Subjunctive: introduction Subjunctive: when to use Pronunciation of the future tense The past historic Hints on French verb forms Translating phrasal verbs Modal verbs: 'can' Adverbs Introduction How to form French adverbs Difficult adverbs Prepositions or adverbs?

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