Welcome back, French learners! Are you ready to examine another word to help you improve your French vocabulary? This week, we’re studying the verb compter.
You can play our audio clip to hear the pronunciation of this verb:
When it comes to the meaning of compter, you’ll find it has a rather wide range of translations – this certainly won’t feel unusual to regular readers of our blog! Its main translation is to count, as in literally counting numerically, or figuratively, in terms of being important to something or someone. But this verb can equally be translated as to include, to allow (for), to matter and to intend (to do something).
To briefly touch on the grammar, you’ll be glad to find that compter follows a regular conjugation pattern for -er type verbs. We have a lot more information about this on our Easy Learning French Grammar pages – read about regular pattern -er verbs in the present indicative, present subjunctive and imperfect tense.
It’s now time to look at some examples of compter in action. You might see it used in the following contexts and phrases:
Mes élèves savent compter jusqu’à cinquante. My pupils know how to count up to fifty.
L’agent de sécurité comptait chaque personne qui est entrée dans le parc. The security guard was counting every person who came into the park.
Qui compte les points ? Who is keeping score?
Ils étaient six, sans compter les deux enfants. There were six of them, not counting / not including the two children.
Je le ferai ! Comptez sur moi. I will do it! Count on me.
Ça ne compte pas, ils ont triché. That doesn’t count, they cheated.
Ton avis compte beaucoup pour moi. Your opinion matters a lot to me.
Nous comptons arriver très tôt le matin. We intend to arrive very early in the morning.
Son père nous a dit de compter environ quinze minutes de trajet. Her dad said that we should allow about fifteen minutes for the journey.
When we study certain verbs in our Word of the Week blog, we sometimes take a look at their related nouns too. In this case, the noun compte comes directly from the verb. You’ll notice that its translation is somewhat related to a lot of the verb translations for compter:
un/le compte account (as in bank or digital login); account (as in an experience); number/count (of something)
That’s all for this week’s blog, but with every new word you learn with us, it’s important to study it more than once to help it stick in your mind. Make it count!
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.
