A warm welcome back to our French language learners! Our weekly vocabulary blog is here to help you learn another new word – today we’ve chosen the verb souhaiter.
The pronunciation of this verb infinitive might not be quite how you’d expect from how it looks. We recommend listening to the audio clip below to make sure you’re getting it right:
Now we can move on to what souhaiter means. We don’t quite have the exact same translation and use in English, but it pretty much translates as ‘to wish’ or ‘to hope’. In French, you might notice that souhaiter is more often used for the idea of expressing your hopes for something, or celebrating something, rather than the sense of ‘wishing’ something for your own desires.
For example, try comparing the way we might say ‘I wish you a Happy Birthday’, to ‘I wish it was my birthday’ – it’s the same word in English, but these would be translated into French in different ways:
Je te souhaite un bon anniversaire. I wish you a Happy Birthday.
J’aimerais que ce soit mon anniversaire. I wish it was my birthday. (Notice the construction aimer + que takes the subjunctive.)
The translation might feel a little tricky to grasp right now, but there’s some good news about the grammar. Souhaiter follows a totally regular conjugation pattern for -er verbs. For more on this, head over to our Easy Learning French Grammar pages to read about regular -er verbs in the present indicative, present subjunctive and imperfect tense.
Ready to look at some examples of how we might use or encounter souhaiter?
souhaiter faire quelque chose to wish/hope to do something
Je souhaite le rencontrer. I hope to meet him.
On souhaite partir en vacances l’année prochaine. We hope to go away on holiday next year.
souhaiter quelque chose à quelqu’un to wish something for someone; to wish someone something
Nous avons souhaité le bonjour à nos nouveaux voisins. We said hello / wished good day to our new neighbours.
On va devoir lui souhaiter bonne chance. We’re going to need to wish him good luck.
Je ne souhaiterais que ton bonheur. I would only wish for your happiness.
Je vous souhaite une bonne année. I wish you a Happy New Year.
Martine a oublié de me souhaiter un bon anniversaire. Martine forgot to wish me a Happy Birthday.
You’ll also come across its related noun, souhait, which is common in set phrases such as:
à souhait as… as you could hope/wish; as… as can be
Mon chien est amiable à souhait. My dog is as friendly as can be.
faire un souhait to make a wish
À tes souhaits ! Bless you! (As in, the response you might give when someone sneezes. And as a bonus note to help you remember, the French phrase almost sounds like it has the word ‘tissue’ in it when said aloud!)
Thank you for taking the time to read our blog on souhaiter. We hope to see you here again next week for another new word, but if not, we wish you all the best with your French learning!
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.
