Welcome back, learners! For today’s French word of the week, we’re looking at the verb connaître.
To learn how to pronounce it, listen to the audio clip below:
We’ll start with the translation of this word. The French verb connaître means to know in English. However, depending on how much French you’ve learnt already (or if you’re a regular reader of our blog), you might have already heard that the verb for to know is savoir. Both points are indeed true.
As you’ll soon see in our examples, the idea of ‘knowledge’ reflected in the verb connaître is about knowing people, places and more abstract concept, whereas savoir is about knowing a fact, a concrete idea, or knowing how to do something. Connaître also has some other useful translations, like to recognise, to be familiar with, and to experience.
To understand where and when you might use connaître, let’s look at some examples:
Mes amis ne connaissent pas mes parents. My friends don’t know my parents.
Je connais très bien Barcelone. I know Barcelona very well.
Est-ce que vous connaissez un bon garagiste près d’ici ? Do you know of a good mechanic near here?
Après avoir passé l’été au Maroc, nous connaissions quelques villes. After having spent the summer in Morocco, we knew some of the cities.
Il vaut bien connaître les dangers de la spéléologie. It’s worth knowing about the dangers of potholing.
connaître de nom / vue / réputation to know by name / sight / reputation
Sa carrière a connu un grand succès l’année dernière. Her career saw / experienced huge success last year.
faire connaître quelque chose (à quelqu’un) to introduce something (to someone); to get (someone) familiar with something
On voudrait faire connaître la cuisine ouzbèke au grand public. We would like to introduce the general public to Uzbek cuisine.
If you’re aware of the rules for conjugating regular -re verbs, then you’ve probably also noticed that connaître does not follow this regular pattern. You can consult our full conjugation table for connaître to learn the different forms of this verb.
Between this blog and our blog on savoir, you now know both of the French verbs translated ‘to know’. We hope that you can apply this new-found knowledge next time you need to work out which verb is the right one to use – good luck!
Written by Holly Tarbet, freelance copywriter and editor.
All opinions expressed on this blog are those of the individual writers, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or policies of Collins, or its parent company, HarperCollins.
