avoir (French) – Structured Vocabulary Support
£2.00
'avoir' means 'to have', and it's one of the two most important verbs in French — you can't get far without it. It's also irregular, and its forms look almost nothing like each other: 'j'ai', 'tu as', 'il a', 'nous avons', 'vous avez', 'ils ont'. Learnt as six unrelated shapes, they're a lot to hold. Knowing where they came from shows why they drifted so far apart — and makes them easier to keep straight.
'avoir' comes from Latin, and the reason its forms look so different today is a story about sounds wearing away over centuries. The resource traces the verb from Latin to Modern French, walks through each present-tense form with a clear example.
9-panel etymology comic in PDF format
Title panel, historical-stage panels tracing the verb from Classical Latin through to Modern French, and a sources panel
A full present-tense conjugation set — 'j'ai', 'tu as', 'il a', 'nous avons', 'vous avez', 'ils ont' — each with a plain example sentence
A panel explaining why the forms look and sound so different from one another
Black-line illustrations, designed to print clearly in black and white
Wrapper page with guidance on how to use the resource and what success looks like
Full sources list, drawn from standard French and Latin etymology references including CNRTL, the Dictionnaire de l'Académie française, Littré, and the Online Etymology Dictionary
For personal use in home education and tutoring only.
This resource is designed first for newcomers to French who find vocabulary hard to acquire and hold on to — often because of memory or retrieval difficulties. It's a supplementary resource. The learner will usually have met 'avoir' already, in a lesson or a textbook, but met isn't the same as retained. The aim is to consolidate that earlier learning by giving the verb a story, on the principle that a word with a story attached is easier to remember than a word learnt as an isolated item.
It suits a wider range too:
KS3 French learners trying to keep the forms of 'avoir' straight
GCSE French learners who need 'avoir' secure for the perfect tense and beyond
Home-educated children working through French at their own pace
Specialist tuition students, including those with dyslexia or working memory profiles
Parents working alongside their children, whether or not they have French themselves
Adults brushing up their own French, or studying alongside a child
Anyone who loves etymology and the way words travel between languages
'avoir' is unavoidable — it's how you say what you have, your age, and (with the perfect tense) half of what happened in the past. But its forms are irregular and look unrelated, which makes them hard to hold for a learner who struggles with retrieval. Showing that the forms all descend from one Latin verb, worn down by centuries of pronunciation change, turns six random shapes into one family with a reason for looking the way it does. For learners who struggle to retain vocabulary, that reason is what makes the forms stick. The resource is short by design. Worked through in short, repeated sessions over time, it does more than a single long explanation read once and forgotten.
Originally created to support one of my own children's learning once the school day had ended.
'avoir' is one of the foundation stones of French, and L'atelier des mots is steadily building a collection of the everyday words and verbs learners meet first. Browse the full range to find others. For more on where everyday French words come from, The Wordhord gathers free word-history posts on French and English vocabulary.
'avoir' means 'to have', and it's one of the two most important verbs in French — you can't get far without it. It's also irregular, and its forms look almost nothing like each other: 'j'ai', 'tu as', 'il a', 'nous avons', 'vous avez', 'ils ont'. Learnt as six unrelated shapes, they're a lot to hold. Knowing where they came from shows why they drifted so far apart — and makes them easier to keep straight.
'avoir' comes from Latin, and the reason its forms look so different today is a story about sounds wearing away over centuries. The resource traces the verb from Latin to Modern French, walks through each present-tense form with a clear example.
9-panel etymology comic in PDF format
Title panel, historical-stage panels tracing the verb from Classical Latin through to Modern French, and a sources panel
A full present-tense conjugation set — 'j'ai', 'tu as', 'il a', 'nous avons', 'vous avez', 'ils ont' — each with a plain example sentence
A panel explaining why the forms look and sound so different from one another
Black-line illustrations, designed to print clearly in black and white
Wrapper page with guidance on how to use the resource and what success looks like
Full sources list, drawn from standard French and Latin etymology references including CNRTL, the Dictionnaire de l'Académie française, Littré, and the Online Etymology Dictionary
For personal use in home education and tutoring only.
This resource is designed first for newcomers to French who find vocabulary hard to acquire and hold on to — often because of memory or retrieval difficulties. It's a supplementary resource. The learner will usually have met 'avoir' already, in a lesson or a textbook, but met isn't the same as retained. The aim is to consolidate that earlier learning by giving the verb a story, on the principle that a word with a story attached is easier to remember than a word learnt as an isolated item.
It suits a wider range too:
KS3 French learners trying to keep the forms of 'avoir' straight
GCSE French learners who need 'avoir' secure for the perfect tense and beyond
Home-educated children working through French at their own pace
Specialist tuition students, including those with dyslexia or working memory profiles
Parents working alongside their children, whether or not they have French themselves
Adults brushing up their own French, or studying alongside a child
Anyone who loves etymology and the way words travel between languages
'avoir' is unavoidable — it's how you say what you have, your age, and (with the perfect tense) half of what happened in the past. But its forms are irregular and look unrelated, which makes them hard to hold for a learner who struggles with retrieval. Showing that the forms all descend from one Latin verb, worn down by centuries of pronunciation change, turns six random shapes into one family with a reason for looking the way it does. For learners who struggle to retain vocabulary, that reason is what makes the forms stick. The resource is short by design. Worked through in short, repeated sessions over time, it does more than a single long explanation read once and forgotten.
Originally created to support one of my own children's learning once the school day had ended.
'avoir' is one of the foundation stones of French, and L'atelier des mots is steadily building a collection of the everyday words and verbs learners meet first. Browse the full range to find others. For more on where everyday French words come from, The Wordhord gathers free word-history posts on French and English vocabulary.
