Bienvenue to all of our French learners! Ready to add a new word to your vocabulary? This week’s word is the verb intéresser.
Before we get into the details, listen to our audio clip to hear how to pronounce it correctly:
As for the translation, this one is fairly obvious… but we don’t have a single, exact equivalent verb in English. The verb intéresser and its related reflexive verb s’intéresser, both mean ‘to be interested’ or ‘to take an interest’.
These types of verbs might feel slightly difficult to make sense of, because their translations involve several words in English, but the French translation only needs one verb.
Despite this slight complexity, intéresser follows a regular conjugation pattern for -er verbs. For more information and examples, head over to our Easy Learning French Grammar pages on the present indicative, present subjunctive and imperfect tense. You can also visit our more extensive section on verbs.
Now, the best way to understand how this verb works is to look at examples in different contexts. Note that if you ever use it reflexively, all reflexive verbs will take être as their auxiliary verb. In other uses, intéresser takes avoir as a transitive verb.
Let’s see how it works:
L’exposition ne l’a pas intéressé. The exhibition didn’t interest her.
Les nouveaux appartements nous intéressaient, mais on a décidé de rester ici. The new apartments interested us, but we decided to stay here.
intéresser quelqu’un à quelque chose to get someone interested in something
Mon oncle m’a intéressé à la musique grecque. My uncle got me interested in Greek music.
Je viens de lire un article que vous intéresserait. I just read an article that would interest you.
Now we’ll see how things look different when using the verb reflexively:
s’intéresser à to be interested in
Je m’intéresse beaucoup à la mode parisienne. I’m very interested in Parisian fashion.
Nous nous intéressons aux films de Truffaut. We’re interested in Truffaut films.
Est-ce que vous vous intéressiez à l’histoire quand vous étiez à l’école ? Were you interested in history when you were at school?
L’année dernière, mes parents ne se sont qu’intéressés aux séries policières danoises. Last year, my parents were only interested in Danish crime series on TV.
With this verb being so similar to the English word, it will also be useful to know its related noun and adjective:
intéressant(e) interesting
Thank for you joining us for this week’s blog and congratulations on improving your vocabulary! If you want to continue taking an interest in learning French, we hope to see you here again next time.
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.
