Every week, our blog offers you a new word to help expand your French vocabulary. This time, we’re looking at conseil.
As usual, the audio clip below will tell you the correct pronunciation of the word – take a listen before we begin.
Moving on to what conseil means, it’s a masculine noun which most commonly translates to ‘advice’ or ‘piece of advice’ in English. In English, the word ‘advice’ doesn’t have a plural version, we could just say ‘some advice’, but the word itself never changes spelling. However, when using it in French, you might sometimes need to turn this singular noun into a plural by adding an -s to make conseils.
Let’s see how this might work in different sentences and set phrases:
donner un conseil to give (a piece of) advice
donner des conseils to give some advice
prendre conseil to take advice
suivre conseil to follow advice
Tu vas à Tallinn ? J’aimerais bien te donner des petits conseils. You’re going to Tallinn? I’d really like to give you some little tips.
On aura besoin de conseils sur les meilleurs coins de Glasgow. We’ll need some advice on the best spots in Glasgow.
Mon fils n’écoute jamais mes conseils. My son never listens to my advice.
demander conseil à quelqu’un to ask someone for advice
Avant d’acheter la voiture, il a demandé conseil à son amie. Before buying the car, he asked his friend for advice.
Our weekly blog isn’t usually so simple… So what’s the trick? Conseil has another meaning as a noun:
conseil (m) a council; committee; board
conseil municipal local/municipal council
conseil législatif legislative council
conseil de guerre council of war
conseil des anciens council of elders
tenir conseil to hold a meeting/assembly/council
It’s certainly useful for you to learn how to use conseil in different contexts, with both of its translations. However, you can also use your newfound knowledge in order to work out the meaning of its related verb, conseiller:
conseiller to advise; to recommend
Si tu n’aimes pas les fraises, je ne te conseille pas ce dessert. If you don’t like strawberries, I wouldn’t recommend you this dessert.
Mon ami m’a conseillé de ne pas prendre le bus pour rentrer. My friend advised me not to take the bus to get back home.
That’s all we have for you in this week’s blog, but we would like to offer you one final piece of advice – make sure to come back next week to learn about another French word!
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.
