How do you identify a verb in french?

Answer 1

Verbs are divided into three groups in French. You have er verbs, ir verbs and re verbs.

An example of each:

manger (to eat)

choisir (to choose)

apprendre (to learn)

Each group is conjugated differently, and there also a lot of irregular verbs which don't follow the regular conjugation patterns.

On top of that, this doesn't mean that every word ending in those letters is a verb.

arbre ends in re, but it's a noun and means tree.

Although there is no sure way to identify a verb in French. The best you can do is assume based on context.

Consider the sentence:

Je mange du pain.

You might know that Je means I, and painmeans bread. Given this, you can assume that the word mange is a verb, because a noun won't sound right there (try it out: I person bread. It just doesn't make sense.)

Just as in English, you must learn to recognise verbs either based on context or by rote.

I'm writing a book.

You know that writing is a verb not because it ends in ing (there are plenty of nouns ending in ing - like swing), but because you simply learned it to be the form of a verb.

Answer 2

No. Reflexive verbs have pretty much the same pattern in French as they have in English. Where you are using 'myself / yourself / himself-herself-itself' etc... the French also add a pronoun, before the verb: 'me / te / se ....'

Ex: I shave myself is 'je me rase'.

Answer 3

Because in the infinitive, it has 'se' in front of it - eg: to wash oneself - se laver.