Welcome back to our monthly blog, where we aim to help you build up your skills for making conversation in French. Whether you’re a lover or a hater of our blog, the topic of this edition is exactly that – how to talk about likes and dislikes.
We’ll cover the most common verbs and phrases which you can use to express these concepts in French. From casual comments or statements, to situations when you really want to assert your preferences, most of us will at some point end up in scenarios where these words come in handy – whether we like it or not!
To begin, we’ll look at some verb infinitives to help you start forming statements, questions and eventually discussing likes and dislikes.
Here are some verbs to use for the positive side of things, to express liking or loving something or someone:
aimer to like
adorer to love
admirer to admire
apprécier to appreciate
And now for the more negative verbs that you might use or hear:
détester to detest; to hate
haïr to hate
mépriser to despise
Now, some verbs which sit somewhere in the middle between likes and dislikes:
préférer to prefer
supporter to tolerate; to put up with
Finally, we can look at a few expressions which aren’t just made up of a single verb:
tenir à to care for/about; to treasure; to value
avoir en horreur / avoir horreur de to loathe; to deeply hate
(se) plaire à to be pleasing (to someone); to find (something) pleasing (but to sounds natural in English, we might just translate this as ‘to like’ or ‘to love’)
Je tiens à ma famille. My family are really important to me.
Nous avons horreur de la pizza. We absolutely hate pizza.
« Est-ce que vous allez voir le ballet ? » « Oui, la danse me plaît. » “Are you going to see the ballet?” “Yes, I love dance.”
After establishing our list of verbs, we’ll now build upon them to make like/dislike statements in different ways.
For example, we could negate a verb in order to achieve its opposite meaning. In English, transforming the meaning using negation works like so:
to like –> to not like = to dislike; to hate
Sometimes we can do this instead of using a real antonym – this technique might come in handy if you can remember the word for love, but not for hate!
Another useful aspect of using negation like ne…pas, is that it can also express a softer tone than strong verbs like ‘hate’ or love’ alone:
Ce n’est pas mon roman favori, mais ne le déteste pas. It’s not my favourite novel, but I don’t hate it.
At the same time, you could also use negation to intensify a verb and set an even stronger tone – it really depends on your word choice:
On n’a jamais adoré habiter ici, c’est nul. We’ve never loved living here, it’s rubbish.
Je ne la supporterai plus ! I will not tolerate her any longer!
For more information, you can visit our Easy Learning French Grammar section on negatives.
As we continue to build upon our initial set of verbs, it’s time to introduce some adverbs into the mix. You can add these to express how much (or how little) you like or dislike the thing you’re talking about.
For example, a very common adverb in this case is bien, which translates as ‘really’:
J’aime les crevettes. I like prawns.
J’aime bien les crevettes. I really like prawns.
Some other options include:
très very
peu little
beaucoup a lot
trop too (much)
If you need further explanation on what adverbs do, head over to our Easy Learning French Grammar section on adverbs.
In conversations about likes and dislikes, questions are a natural part of the back and forth. For this, you might want to take a quick refresher by reading our French conversation blog on asking questions, but we’ll also summarise below using a verb from this blog.
To ask ‘do you like this colour?’, you can:
- Use the structure ‘est-ce que…’ meaning ‘is it that…?’
- Est-ce que tu aimes cette couleur ?
- Invert the verb and the subject.
- Aimes-tu cette couleur ?
- Use ‘upwards’ question intonation on a statement when speaking aloud.
- Tu aimes cette couleur ?
Armed with a strong foundation of expressing what we like, dislike or prefer, we can now look at an example conversation between you (A), your new friend (B) and another mutual friend (C).
Remember, we studied a whole host of features to discuss what you like – different verbs, negation, adverbs and questions. Everything might come together something like this:
B : Alors, qu’est-ce qu’on va faire ce weekend ? So, what are we going to do this weekend?
A : Je voudrais voir le nouveau film d’horreur. Est-ce que ça vous plaît ? I’d like to see the new horror film. Do you like the sound of that?
C : Moi je n’aime pas beaucoup les films d’horreur. Je préférerais voir un concert s’il y’en a… ça vous dit ? I don’t like horror films much. I would prefer to go to a gig if there’s anything on… are you up for that?
B : Ça me dit ! Je déteste les films d’horreur ! I’m up for that. I hate horror films!
A : Bon, ça m’est égal. Vous aimez quel genre de musique ? Well, I’m easy either way. Which type of music do you both like?
C : J’aime bien le jazz et le rock. I really like jazz and rock.
B : Je préfère le rock. I prefer rock.
A : Moi aussi j’adore ça ! Me too, I love it!
C : Bon, on cherchera des billets ? Well, shall we look for tickets
Language In Use
Here is a summary of the most useful words, phrases and structures covered in this blog.
Verbs for saying what you like:
- aimer
- adorer
Verbs for saying what you don’t like
- detester
- haïr
Negating the verb:
- ne…pas
- Je n’aime pas …
Adding adverbs
- bien
- très
- peu
- beaucoup
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.
