It’s time to add a new French word to your vocabulary. This week, we’re looking at the verb donner.
You can listen to the pronunciation of donner in the audio clip below:
As for the meaning of this verb, we’ll give you a hint – try considering similar-looking words in English, like ‘donor’, ‘donation’ or ‘donate’, which all convey the idea of ‘giving’ something. You guessed it! The French verb donner means to give or to give away in English.
Donner belongs to the family of regular -er verbs, which means once you’ve learned the pattern for one verb, you can conjugate any in the regular group. On our grammar pages, you can find out about how to do this in the present tense, the imperfect tense and present subjunctive. For information about verbs in general, you can browse our verb section in Easy Learning French Grammar.
Shall we give you some examples of the verb in action?
donner quelque chose à quelqu’un to give something to someone
Elle ne m’a pas donné son numéro de téléphone. She didn’t give me her phone number.
Je donnerai de l’argent à mes nièces. I will give money to my nieces.
Donnez-lui un morceau de pain. Give him a bit of bread.
Ça t’a donné faim ? Did that make you feel hungry? (literally ‘to give hunger’)
On veut que vous donniez ton avis ! We want you to give your opinion!
« Est-ce que tu peux nous donner des conseils ? » « Désolée, je n’en ai pas. » “Can you give us some advice?” “Sorry, I don’t have any.”
A-t-il donné à manger au chat avant de partir ? Did he feed the cat before leaving?
While all of the verb examples so far are transitive, meaning the subject has a direct object for the action of ‘giving’, you’ll also come across cases of donner being used intransitively:
donner de sa personne to give a lot of yourself; to go out of your way
Les figuiers donnent deux fois par an. Fig trees bear fruit twice a year.
Hier soir la musique donnait à fond. The music last night was really blaring.
donner sur to look out on; to have a view of; to open out onto
Nous aimerions une chambre qui donne sur la plage. We would like a room that opens out onto the beach.
Mon appartement de rêve donnerait sur l’acropole d’Athènes. My dream apartment would have a view of the Athens Acropolis.
Has this blog given you a better understanding of how and when you might use this verb? If so, we hope that you’ll give our next blog a read too!
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.
