Transcript

French spelling and grammar can be very complicated, even for native French speakers.

There are lots of exceptions and agreements to be respected, and it doesn't take long for a mistake to be made. Even Emmanuel Macron, the French president, has made spelling mistakes in his tweets.

Welcome to another French lesson. Today, we're going to correct some spelling mistakes made by French-speaking stars and celebrities on their social networks.

We'll be looking at spelling mistakes by Angèle, Karim Benzema, Kylian Mbappé, Patricia Kaas and many others.

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I'll show you a tweet, Instagram post or Facebook post from a celebrity and give you a few seconds to find the mistake or mistakes. Then we'll correct them together and I'll explain the mistake.

Obviously, the aim of this video is not at all to make fun of these celebrities or to stigmatize them. When you're writing all day on social networks, and sometimes you have to write very quickly, a mistake can happen very quickly.

I just wanted to have a bit more fun to work with for this French lesson, rather than taking mistakes found on the internet, made by strangers, made by anonymous people.

I sometimes make spelling mistakes too, and I'll give you one at the end of the video.

To make this video, I used a spellchecker unlike any other. It's called MerciApp. It's an extension you can add to your browser that corrects your spelling in real time, everywhere, all the time.

In your e-mails, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Word or Outlook. The special thing about this spellchecker is that, as well as telling you what spelling mistakes you've made, it also explains the grammatical or spelling rule.

And that's really great, because as well as correcting you, it helps you improve your French. What's also really interesting for those of you learning French is that the tool will tell you if you've got the meaning of words wrong. It understands the context of your sentence and tells you if you've made a mistake in writing the word.

For example, if I write, "my friend's sea is nice" and write "sea" M E R, MerciApp will understand that I meant a mom and not the sea where we go to the beach.

On any site you go to, if you double-click on a word, you also get the definition of the word that appears and synonyms for that word. This is also very useful if you want to learn French by reading.

This tool also saves you a lot of time. Let me give you a personal example. When I send an email, I'm always stressed about making spelling mistakes, so I sometimes re-read it four or five times.

Since I've been using the MerciApp tool, if no words are underlined, I know it's OK, that I can send the email without stressing.

In the tool's interface, you also have statistics that show you the mistakes you make most often. This is a very good indicator of where you need to work.

There's a free 100 % version and a pro version. For the pro version with more features, you get a 30-day trial totally free and then you can get 30 % with my code HELLOFRENCH.

Now let's get down to business. Let's start right away with two Instagram posts from Marion Cotillard. You certainly know her if you have seen the movie Batman.

So I display the first post on the screen. Here she has relayed the text of a French politician who made a mistake, but she should have checked before copying and pasting. I'll give you a few seconds to find the mistake, which is easy. Let's start slowly.

As you've probably guessed, "an" is missing an "s". "Two years" is plural, so it needs an "s".

Second post by Marion Cotillard. *Post reading on screen*.

Here, there are three errors. I'll give you a few seconds to find them.

Then you can see it. Personally, I don't write like that.

There are no rules here, you just need to know the correct spelling of the word.

"Paimpol" has to be capitalized because it's a town.

Then there's another very common mistake. You see, it's a punctuation error. We always add a space between an exclamation mark or a question mark and the word before it.

So you see here the extension I use explains it. So the exclamation mark is stuck to the text that precedes it. It must be preceded by a space.

You probably know Angèle from her duet Fever with Dua Lupa. Here we have two mistakes she's made.

The first in an Instagram post. *Read the post ".

I'll give you a few seconds to find the error. December and the months of the year are always written in lower case. There is never a capital letter. The same goes for the days of the week.

In a TikTok she puts *Read post ".

There are two here. A spelling mistake and a punctuation error.

You may have found the spelling mistake. "I wrote.

Écrit is a past participle here, so it must be written with a "t". When you put three little dots to signify etc., you don't need a space. Here, you don't need a space, you need to stick the three dots with the preceding word.

Let's move on to "Jul", a very famous rapper in France. His music registers over 5 billion streams in France.

On the other hand, he does make a few spelling mistakes on the networks.

Then the first one. *Post reading "

I'll give you a few seconds to figure it out. The error is in the word "likes", it's not tuned correctly. Again, this is a mistake I see very often on the networks. You have to agree the verb with the subject. People tend to put an "s" if you put "you". But no, it's "likes" with an "e".

*Read post*. There is a mistake here. If you write "his" S A. It is a possessive determiner.

But here we have a verb. It happens. Ça is short for "it happens".

So of course you have to write that, c cedilla a and add the capitalization obviously.

Let's move on to the leader of France, our President Emmanuel Macron. After Les Bleus' defeat in Qatar, he made a tweet which he promptly deleted.

But here he is - are you going to find the spelling mistake he made?

In a tweet, he misaligned the auxiliary with the subject. "On" is of course spelt O N T.

Soprano, a French rapper from Marseilles, just like Jul. Here's a first sentence. *Read the post ".

There are two related spelling mistakes here. Firstly, "as" is of course spelled A S.

There's a bad agreement between the subject and the auxiliary. The second mistake is "régalé". Régalé requires an S, of course, because the direct object complement is placed before the verb, and when this is the case with the auxiliary avoir, most of the time you have to agree.

Another sentence from Soprano that he posted on Instagram.

Join me this Saturday, December 3rd at 2pm for an exclusive showcase.

Here you have two errors. As in Angèle's sentence, and this was about the same month, December is always written with a lower case letter.

Find me. You must always hyphenate a verb with the pronoun that follows it.

Kylian Mbappé. I don't know if I need to introduce him to you. He's an international soccer star. Here he's talking to a little girl.

*Post reading*.

So this error here may be a little harder to find, I'll give you a few seconds.

"Continue" should not be written with an "s". In the imperative form, the "s" is dropped if it's a first-group verb. So if you had E S, even if you're addressing the second person singular, you need to remove the S.

Let's move on to some mistakes made by Adèle Exarchopoulos, who is a great French actress. She starred in the Cannes award-winning film "La Vie d'Adèle".

It won the Palme d'Or, I think. *Post reading*.

There's a mistake here and I'll give you a clue. It's in the second sentence. I'll leave you to think about it.

The error is in "laissés". Laissé" is written with an "é" with the auxiliary "avoir", and the past participle is generally not granted, unless the direct object is placed before the verb.

Here, it's not the case, so we don't tune. This is the basic rule.

*Post reading*.

So shorts, by which I mean short films, and à l'arrache, by which I mean unprepared. It's slang, it's colloquial. There's a mistake in this sentence, and it's easy enough to find.

The error is in the verb "faisait". The subject agreement is incorrect. The subject is "on", third person singular. Faisait is written with a "t".

Karim Benzema, also an international soccer player. *Post reading*.

There are two errors here. Merci should be capitalized because it's the beginning of a sentence. When you start a sentence, you capitalize it. That's how it's done in French. "Tous" should of course be written with an "s" to match your messages. There are several messages, so of course you have to put an "s".

Carla Bruni. I don't know if that name rings a bell. She's a former First Lady of France. She's the wife of Nicolas Sarkozy, who is also a singer, actress and model.

You may have seen her in Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris. *Post reading*.

You have two mistakes in this sentence, one easy and one much more difficult. I'll give you a few seconds to find them.

First mistake. A few days ago took place. The auxiliary is not correct. The accent is reserved for the preposition "a".

The second mistake is in fundraising. Funds are always being raised. There are several of them, so you always have to put an "s" when you talk about raising funds.

A post by Alizée, I think she's very famous in Japan, she's a singer who sings "Moi Lolita", I don't know if you know this music.

*Post reading*.

So here, the mistake is pretty hard to find. The mistake here is in "balade". When we talk about a balade, a walk, the word is spelled with a single L. If you put two Ls, then you're talking about a poem or a song.

Patricia Kaas, interpreter of "Mon mec à moi". Where are the men?

Here, there are two errors, but one main error that comes up very frequently in French. I leave you the time to look at it.

"Où" is spelled O U with an accent on the ù. So both exist in French. If you write "or" O U, you leave a choice.

Do you prefer dogs or cats?

On the other hand, when you want to talk about a place, you have to use an accent. This is an interrogative adverb. Where are the men? Where are they? Where are the men?

And finally, let's close with a mistake I made in a YouTube video that was pointed out to me in a comment.

Not very nicely, I might add. But you're right to tell me when I make mistakes too. "I broke my leg"

I had written "cassée" É E. Since the basic rule with the past participle auxiliary être is to agree it with the subject.

Of course, this is French, and there are many exceptions. This is the case in this sentence, because it's a reflexive verb. So I broke my leg.

With pronominal verbs, the basic rule is that past participle agreement is the same as for the verb to have. So the past participle will only be granted if the direct object complement is placed before the verb.

To find a direct object complement, you need to ask the question who or what. In this case, what did I break? A leg, as it's placed after the verb, so there's no agreement, it remains invariable.

That's it for today.

I hope you enjoyed this exercise.

I hope you enjoyed correcting the spelling mistakes of these French-speaking stars and celebrities with me.

If so, please let me know in the comments. Let me know if you'd like more videos like this. And of course, give the video a "like".

To help me make this video, I used the MerciApp extension. If you're interested, don't forget I've included a description and a promotional code in the description of my video.

See you soon!