French and English verbs taking prepositions

Introduction A study of this one area of language is what elevates an average speaker of French to one that will impress. The problem for English learners is that many are not even aware that the English language is a weird mix of two grammar systems, with respect to relative pronouns and prepositions. The 'lowbrow' system ( which the vast majority of spoken English uses ) a) uses the generic pronouns 'what' and 'that' and b) puts prepositions on the end of a sentence:

That's the tree the cat fell out of.
I'm not buying that one - it's the one that's got a mark on it.
Real music is something I would die for.

The 'lowbrow' system gets mangled even more when in and around London, as 'that' becomes 'what:'

That's the car what's got a big dent in it!

The point is that none of these sentences translate directly into French. However, when we re-write the sentences using the 'highbrow' system, they tend to translate almost word-for-word. In the highbrow system, English uses the pronoun 'which' which is preceded by a preposition, and also as a consequence avoids the words 'that' and 'what.' The sentences re-written become:

That's the tree from where the cat fell.
I'm not buying that one - it's the one on which there is a mark.
Real music is something for which I would die.
That's the car upon which there is a big dent

These now translate easier into French:

C'est l'arbre d'où le chat est tombé.
Je ne vais pas acheter celui-là - c'est celui sur lequel il y a une tache
La vraie musique est quelque chose pour laquelle je mourrais.
C'est la voiture sur laquelle il y a une grosse bosse.


Just as with English however, relative pronouns can sound excessive and clumsy, so they can sometimes be avoided altogether:

That's the car with the big dent.
C'est la voiture avec une grosse bosse.


Often however, simplifications are not possible and the highbrow version doesn't really exist either. For example, there's no real way to re-write:

That's not what I expected!
That's just what I need.


The painful reality is thus, when comparing the same verbs in English and French, there are several situations:

- where neither have to use a preposition: I'm eating a sweet. Je mange un bonbon.
- where they use the same preposition: I'm counting on you. Je compte sur toi.
- where French uses a preposition, but English doesn't: I need a holiday. J'ai besoin d'une vacance.
- where English uses a preposition, but French doesn't: I'm looking for my dog. Je cherche mon chien.
- where the two verbs use different prepositions: It depends on the weather. Ca dépends du temps.

This is made worse by the fact that many common verbs change their meaning entirely depending on the preposition:

To put on = to wear
To put up with = to suffer


And the same situation exists in French:

Penser à: To have someone/something in your mind (I'm thinking about you).
Penser de: To have an opinion about something (What do you think of this book?).

And sometimes, the context changes the entire meaning, even with the same preposition:

"To put on" as in "to put on airs and graces" , meaning to affect, or to posturise.

("To put up with" is an example made famous by Churchill. The story goes that somebody picked him up on his English, claiming he was using the lowbrow system and ending sentences on prepositions. His reply, apparently, was "That is something up with which I shall not put," highlighting the absurdity of trying to create 'highbrow' alternatives for English verbs that were never designed to be used as such.)



The reality then is that one of the most important study areas for advanced learners is verb prepositions and relative pronouns. You will never sound French without getting good at this area. It's the one aspect of the language that immediately raises your fluency to another level.

As such a number of practice sets on this website are provided for this:

Verbs: prop in Eng, none in Fr	Where the English verb uses a preposition and French does not
Verbs: Fr: à, Eng: none	Where French uses 'à' but English doesn't
Verbs: Fr: +de, Eng: none	Where French uses 'de' but English doesn't
Verbs: Fr/Eng same pronoun	Where both languages happily share the same preposition
Eng. verbs changing meaning	Where the English verb changes its meaning with the preposition
Fre. verbs changing meaning	Where the French verb changes its meaning with the preposition

A fluency in the French prepositional verbs is crucial to use relative pronouns correctly. It's kind of useless to understand the grammar rules behind relative pronouns without having an extensive knowledge of the prepositional verbs. This is one of the problems when learning French in school; students might only know a handful of these verbs when the advanced ( and difficult ) relative pronouns rules are introduced at A-level. ( The author of this website was in one such class with a native French teacher, who was angrily contemptuous of the official A-level book being used for the course - she disagreed with the translations within of nearly every single example involving relative pronouns - for the very good reason that a lot of this stuff is idiomatic.)

As such the solution is to not just learn the verbs in isolation, but always learn an example sentence with that verb in. That is then entire purpose of these practice sets - they contain sentences, not just the individual verbs.


Note that separate learning cards are provided for the "relative pronouns" and "prepositional adverbs" list options.

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This is a set list, so as with all lists in the system, it is level-independent.