Welcome back to our blog for French learners! It’s your weekly opportunity to learn about an interesting word and improve your vocabulary. Today we’ve chosen the verb plaire.
You can hear the pronunciation of the verb in its infinitive form by using the audio clip below:
It might not be immediately recognisable, but if you’ve already learned the very basics of French, you’ve probably encountered the verb plaire without realising. We might translate it as ‘to appeal to’, ‘to like’ or ‘to enjoy’, but it also means ‘to please’.
Maybe you’ll recognise it better as part of this well-known phrase?
S’il vous plaît. / S’il te plaît. Please. (formal/informal)
If we translated this word for word, it means ‘If it pleases you’, with plaît being the 3rd person present form of plaire.
While there are rules for conjugating regular -re verbs, plaire is an irregular verb that you’ll unfortunately need to learn the conjugations for. If you do want to get started, head over to our verb table for plaire.
While the expression for ‘please’ will be the most common way you encounter plaire, it’s certainly worth knowing how else you can use it. Let’s get into the examples:
Je prendrai deux kilos de fraises, s’il vous plaît. I will take two kilos of strawberries please.
SVP / STP please (this is a casual abbreviation of s’il vous/te plaît that you might see in a text or online)
Ce livre m’a beaucoup plu. I really liked this book / This book really pleased me / I really enjoyed this book.
Un voyage en Inde nous plairait bien. We would really like a trip to India.
plaire à quelqu’un to appeal to someone (this can also be used in the sense of attraction to someone)
Ce sont des idées qui plaisent au tout le monde. These are ideas that appeal to everyone.
Comme il vous plaira. As you wish/As you like.
Je crois que ça va te plaire ! I think you’re going to like it!
« Est-ce que tu sors en boîte avec nous ce soir ?» « Non. Ça ne me plaît pas. » “Are you coming out clubbing with us tonight?” “No. I don’t like (doing) that.”
Well, that’s all we wanted to share about plaire for now! We hope that this week’s blog pleased your French-learning needs and hope you’ll join us again next time, if you’d like to.
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.
