Bienvenue to our regular readers and to anyone joining us for the first time! For this edition’s French word of the week blog, we’ve chosen the verb s’occuper.
Have a listen to our audio clip below to hear how to pronounce it:
As for the translation, you’ll first need to consider the fact that it’s a reflexive verb. In addition, it has different meanings when used transitively and intransitively. All in all, this means there are several translations of s’occuper, including ‘to keep yourself busy/occupied’, ‘to look after, ‘to be in charge of’ and ‘to take care of’.
This verb might feel a bit odd at first, because the translations require multiple words in English but only one single verb in French. Even if this feels difficult, the good news is that s’occuper follows a regular conjugation pattern for -er verbs. We have lots of information and examples on our Easy Learning French Grammar pages about the present indicative, present subjunctive and imperfect tense.
Our next step towards understanding s’occuper is to look at some examples in use. You’ll be able to see different translations used in different contexts:
s’occuper àquelque chose to occupy yourself with something; to keep yourself busy with something
Aujourd’hui je m’occupe à faire le ménage. Today I’m keeping myself busy with doing the housework.
Vous vous occuperez aux jeux vidéo, comme d’habitude. You’ll be occupied with video games, as usual.
s’occuper dequelque chose / quelqu’un to look after ; to take care of ; to be in charge of ; to deal with something / someone
s’occuper deses affaires to take care of (one’s) business
s’occuper d’un groupe / d’un club to be in charge of a group / club
s’occuperdes enfants to look after (the) children
Nous allons nous occuper du dîner. We’re going to take care of dinner.
Est-ce que ta sœur ne s’occupait pas de votre grand-mère ? Was your sister not looking after your grandmother?
On s’occupe de vous, Monsieur ? Is someone looking after you, sir? / Are you being served, sir? (this phrase is common in somewhere providing a service, like a restaurant or bar)
Je m’occuperai de la réunion s’il ne vient pas. I’ll be in charge of the meeting if he doesn’t come.
It’s important to know that all reflexive verbs take être as their auxiliary verb in compound tenses. Here are some examples of this in action:
Elles se sont très bien occupées de notre famille. They looked after our family really well.
Quand je suis arrivé, Paul ne s’était pas encore occupé de nettoyer la cuisine. When I arrived, Paul still had not taken care of cleaning the kitchen.
Thank you for reading our blog on s’occuper. If you’d like to improve your vocabulary, come back next week – we’ll take care of explaining the words, but you’ll be in charge of learning and remembering them!
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.
