Do You Like French Cheese?

Learn how to use the verbs "to like" and "to love"

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Lesson Transcript

Salut, je m'appelle Ingrid. Hi everybody! I’m Ingrid.

Welcome to FrenchPod101.com’s “Le français en 3 minutes”. The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn French.

In the last lesson, we learned how to use the verb faire which means "to do" in French.

In this lesson, we will learn how to use aimer, the most romantic French verb, which is also the third verb in our series dedicated to the most common French verbs.

Aimer can mean both "to like" and "to love" in French, so in this lesson we are going to see how to use it correctly. Let’s go! C’est parti!

Imagine you are in a restaurant with your fiancé and he or she asks you: Est-ce que tu aimes le fromage ?

This means "Do you like cheese?" in an informal form.

So supposing you like it (even if it is not so romantic!) You can ask Oui, j’aime le fromage.

[slowly] Oui, j’aime le fromage.

So let’s break down this answer:

First we had:

Oui which is simply "Yes."

Then J’ which is the contraction for Je, which is "I" in French (as aimer is starting with a vowel, we use J’ only)

After we have aime, which is the 1st person form of the verb aimer verb in the present indicative.

Finally we had Le fromage -- that is the correct way to call the cheese in general.

So all together it is Oui, j’aime le fromage.

Note that in French we use the verb aimer to express both that we "love" or that we "just like" something or someone.

Even if you just appreciate something, you can use aimer. On the other hand, it is also the verb to use when talking about something you really love or about the person you are in love with.

In fact, the verb aimer has different levels of understanding, and this often depends on the word that comes after it. For example, if you add bien after J’aime -- to say J’aime bien le fromage it will mean that you like cheese, but not so much.

To say that you really love or enjoy something or someone, you can add the word beaucoup after J’aime as in J’aime beaucoup ce film which means "I really enjoy this movie". Here it is stronger and means you like it very much.

And of course, aimer is above all the verb of love, so if you are talking to the person you fell in love with, you can tell him Je t’aime, which is the famous "I love you" in French! Isn’t that romantic?

Now it’s time for Ingrid’s Insights.

In French, if you really want to insist on the fact that you love something but in an informal way, you use the verb adorer which is "to like"/"to enjoy" something/someone very much

Thus, you will certainly hear J’adore les vacances! often. This means "I really enjoy holidays!"

In this lesson, we learned how to use the verb aimer depending on the degree of your love!

Next time we’ll learn another very useful and romantic verb, venir.

Do you know what this French verb means? I’ll be waiting for you in the next Le français en 3 minutes.