Conjugaison présent : le verbe manger

Today, let's study the present tense for : la conjugaison du verbe "manger" (to eat).

There is a (little) trick, but just a tiny, tiny little one. Tiny but interesting because it will give you a good insight of the French phonetics.

In a previous article, I explained that in French, to conjugate a verb of the "premier groupe" at the present tense, you need to take the infinitive and drop the end "ER". Then, you have what we call "le radical" (the basis) and on this "radical" you all the "terminaison".

So, just as a quick reminder :

Let's take a close look at "nous" :

• Nous parlons
• Nous dansons
• Nous chantons

We have the "radical" and "terminaison"...

Verbe manger au présent

Now, the verb "manger" is interesting because of the "g" in its radical.

In French, there are two prononciations for "g" :

ga, go, gu = g as in goat, garden, ghost

gi, ge, gy = "j" as in gipsy, girafe

So... if you take the infinitive of the verb "manger" and remove the end "ER", you have this radical : MANG

• Je mange
• Tu manges
• Il mange
• Nous mangeons
• Vous mangez
• Ils mangent

As you can see, we have to add an "E" at "nous" to keep the right prononciation otherwise it would have changed the verb.

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