It’s the start of a new week, so time to learn about a new French word. In this blog, we’re looking at the verb retourner.
We’ll start by listening to the pronunciation, which you can hear in the audio clip below:
As our regular readers will know, it’s generally not recommended to try and think of similar English words to help you work out translations. However, retourner does sound a bit familiar… right? Indeed, one of the translations of retourner is ‘to return’ or ‘to go back’. That said, it can also mean ‘to turn over’, ‘to turn around’, so it can have various English translations depending on the context.
In terms of grammar, our readers will be glad to learn that retourner follows a regular pattern in all tenses for -er verbs. This should make our upcoming examples fairly easy to follow, but you can also read our Easy Learning French Grammar content for more information. We have pages on regular -er verbs in the present indicative, present subjunctive and imperfect tense.
We’ll start with examples using retourner intransitively, which means the subject of our sentence is doing the action of ‘returning’ or ‘going back’. When used intransitively, retourner uses être in compound tenses:
retourner à to go back to; to return to (doing or being something)
retourner (à) quelque part to go back somewhere
retourner en arrière to turn back (the other way)
Ils sont tous retournés à travailler. They’ve all gone back to work.
Est-ce que tu voudrais retourner à Barcelone cette année ? Would you like to go back to Barcelona this year?
Je prends une pause, puis je retournerai à mes devoirs. I’m taking a break, then I’ll return to my homework.
Now for the transitive use, which has a slight change in translation. It also means ‘return’ in the sense of ‘give back’, but also translates as ‘to turn over’ and ‘to turn around’, among other things. It also needs a direct object to make sense. When used transitively, retourner uses avoir in compound tenses:
Attention ! Ne retourne pas ce carton s’il te plaît ! Watch out! Please don’t turn this box upside down.
On a retourné l’ordinateur pour brancher le nouveau câble derrière. We turned the computer around to connect the new cable at the back.
Il retournera l’omelette dans la poêle. He will turn over / flip the omelette in the frying pan.
Pour mieux laver tes vêtements, tu dois les retourner. To wash your clothes better, you have to turn them inside out.
Mes grands-parents s’occupent d’une petite ferme. Chaque printemps, ils retournent la terre avant de semer. My grandparents look after a small farm. Every spring, they turn over the earth before seeding.
With another verb added to your vocabulary, it’s certainly not time to stop learning. We hope that you’ll not only go back to look at some of our older blogs to consolidate your knowledge, but also return next week for another 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.
