Welcome back to word of the week! Today’s French blog is focusing on verbs – we’re looking at the verb rappeler.
You can find the pronunciation of the word in our audio clip below:
Now, what exactly does rappeler mean in English? As always, we like to keep things interesting by picking French words which have different meanings in different contexts. You can translate rappeler in many ways, including to call (someone) back, to remind, and to recall.
Just quickly on grammar, rappeler almost follows a regular conjugation pattern for -er type verbs. But there are some irregularities which you’ll need to learn – check out the conjugation table for rappeler.
If you want to read about -er verbs in more detail, head over to our Easy Learning French Grammar pages about regular -er verbs in the present indicative, present subjunctive and imperfect tense.
We’ve now covered the meanings and grammar, so it’s time to get started on some examples of rappeler in action:
rappeler quelque chose à quelqu’un to remind somebody of something
rappeler à quelqu’un de faire quelque chose to remind somebody to do something
Peux-tu me rappeler de sortir la poubelle demain matin ? Can you remind me to take the bin out tomorrow morning?
Rappelez-moi votre nom. Remind me of your name.
Elle a rappelé son chien avant de sortir du parc. She called her dog back over before leaving the park.
On rappellera l’ambassadeur à cause de la guerre. They will call the ambassador back home because of the war.
« Est-ce que vous pouvez me rappeler dans dix minutes ? » « Oui, je vous rappellerai. » “Can you call me back in ten minutes?” “Yes, I’ll ring you back.”
Ses chansons nous rappellent nos vacances en Italie. Her songs remind us of our holidays in Italy.
Tu me rappelais ton frère autrefois. You used to remind me of your brother.
Ça rappelle les années soixante. It’s reminiscent of the sixties.
It’s also worth knowing about the reflexive form se rappeler. The most common translation in this case is slightly different from the examples above:
se rappeler to remember
Je ne me rappelle plus rien de cette époque. I no longer remember anything about that time.
Nous nous rappelons très bien vos parents. We remember your parents really well.
Il s’est rappelé la dernière fois qu’on s’est vus. He remembered the last time that we saw each other.
Well done, you’ve improved your French vocabulary yet again. Do you reckon you’ll be able to remember all the details by the time our next blog is out? We should also remind you to come back here at the same time next week!
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.
