Welcome back to our French word of the week blog. The word we’ve chosen for this edition is aussi.
Before we discuss anything else, you’ll want to know how it sounds in French. Take a listen to the pronunciation below:
Now it’s time for the translation – the French word aussi translates as also or too in English. We might use these two terms in a slightly different way in English – for example, ‘me too’ sounds more natural than ‘me also’ – but either way, your go-to French word will most likely be aussi. It does have another usage which we’ll explain later, but you’ll most commonly use it for ‘also’ and ‘too’.
The most important grammar point is that aussi is an adverb. You might remember that in terms of word order, adverbs normally come right after the verb. However, sometimes you might find aussi out of order and closer to the start or the end of a sentence, purely for emphasis – we’ll look at a few examples to illustrate.
Ready to see how aussi might work in different contexts?
« Karina veut venir aussi ?» « Oui, et moi aussi. » “Karina wants come as well?” “Yes, and me too.”
« Nous habitons à Manchester. » « Ah bon, nous aussi. » “We live in Manchester”. “Oh, us too / so do we.”
C’est aussi mon problème. It’s my problem as well.
Il y aura de la musique et aussi la danse. There will be music and also dancing.
Ma mère parle le français, le russe et aussi l’allemand. My mum speaks French, Russian and also German
Lui aussi a réservé des billets. He too reserved some tickets. (Here is an example of aussi appearing before the verb for emphasis.)
You might have noticed that there’s no use of negative constructions here with the verbs, which would become ‘not… either’ in English rather than ‘also’ or ‘too’. It’s the same in French – rather than using the same word aussi, we would need to switch to using the term non plus.
At the start, we did mention another use of aussi which is quite distinct from what we’ve just learned. You’ll find it in a set phrase alongside the preposition que, like this:
aussi…que as…as
Il est aussi méchant que son frère. He’s just as mean as his brother.
Partons ! Aussi vite que possible ! Let’s leave! As quickly as possible!
That’s all for this week’s edition, and as much as we’d like to share more French words with you, you’ll have to wait until next time. Thanks for reading and don’t forget that we’ve got tons of blogs in our archive 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.
