We hope you’re looking forward to starting your week with another new French word! In today’s blog, we’re studying the verb agir.
Have a listen to its pronunciation in the audio clip below:
As always, we choose certain words for our blog because they’re interesting or tricky for learners (or sometimes both!). We’ll first look at agir as a regular verb, then at its reflexive form, s’agir. If you need more information, head over to our Easy Learning French Grammar page on reflexive verbs.
You’ll need to know about both forms, because they are translated and used in very different ways:
agir to act; to behave
s’agir to be about (something); to concern (something)
Luckily, for both agir and s’agir, you can conjugate the verb in all tenses as a regular -ir verb. Our Easy Learning French Grammar pages tell you everything you need to know about conjugating regular -ir verbs in the:
Now it’s time to move on to some examples, starting with agir:
agir dans l’intérêt de… to act in the (best) interest of…
laisser agir to leave to work (as in ‘take effect’)
bien / mal agir to behave well / badly
Elle mal agissait envers eux. She was behaving/acting badly towards them.
Vous avez agi courageusement pour gagner. You acted courageously in order to win.
We’ll now look at s’agir. In current, everyday French, there’s really just one important structure and conjugation that you’ll need to learn that contains this verb. It’s an impersonal expression (meaning you only see it used with il, meaning ‘it’):
- Il s’agit de… It’s about…
Let’s take a look at some examples in action:
« J’ai lu un roman très intéressant la semaine dernière. » « De quoi s’agit-il ? » “I read a really interesting book last week.” “What’s it about?”
Il y a une rumeur qui court… il s’agit de ton frère. There’s a rumour going around… It’s about your brother.
Quand il s’agit de connaître les meilleurs restaurants, il faut demander à Yuki. When it’s about / When it comes to knowing the best restaurants, you need to ask Yuki.
il s’agit de faire (quelque chose) we must do (something)
Congratulations on learning another French word to bolster your vocabulary. We hope you’ll come back again to find out what our next blog is all about!
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.
