The short version

• The short form (an, jour, matin) is used for counting — with numbers, dates, and simple facts.
• The long form (année, journée, matinée) is used to emphasize duration or how the time was spent.

If you’re just naming a unit of time or counting how many, use the short form. If you’re describing the whole span of it, or what happened during it, use the long form.

An vs année

• Counting: J’ai vingt-cinq ans. (I’m twenty-five years old.)
• Simple date reference: L’an prochain (next year, as a simple marker).
• Duration/quality: Cette année a été difficile. (This year was difficult — describing the whole span.)
• Emphasis on how it went: J’ai passé une bonne année. (I had a good year.)
• A fixed reference point: Le nouvel an (New Year’s, the simple date marker) vs bonne année (the greeting, emphasizing the year as an experience).

Jour vs journée, matin vs matinée

• Counting days: Il reste trois jours. (Three days are left.)
• Whole-day experience: J’ai passé une journée horrible. (I had a terrible day.)
• Simple time marker: Le matin, je bois du café. (In the morning, I drink coffee.)
• Duration of a morning: Toute la matinée, il a plu. (It rained the whole morning.)
• Repeated schedule: Tous les jours, je me lève à sept heures. (Every day, I get up at seven.)

Quick chart

Soir vs soirée follows the same pattern

The same short/long split applies to soir and soirée, and it’s worth learning as the fourth member of the set rather than treating it separately. Le soir is the simple, factual evening — used for schedules and habits, as in je travaille le soir (I work in the evening). La soirée is the evening as an experience, a party, or a stretch of time you lived through — bonne soirée (have a good evening) uses the long form because you’re wishing someone a good experience of it, not just naming the time slot. The same logic explains why French party invitations always say soirée and never soir: a soirée can literally mean “a party.” Once you notice that the long forms tend to show up with adjectives describing quality — bonne, mauvaise, longue, difficile — and the short forms tend to show up with numbers and simple time markers, the whole four-pair system stops feeling arbitrary and starts feeling like one rule applied four times. A useful test: if you could swap in the phrase “the whole [time period]” or “what a [time period] it was” in English, French wants the long form; if you’re just naming or counting the unit, French wants the short one.

Mistakes learners make

• Saying j’ai vingt-cinq années instead of j’ai vingt-cinq ans — counting age always uses the short form, never the long one.
• Using jour when describing how a whole day went: j’ai eu un bon jour should be j’ai eu une bonne journée.
• Defaulting to the short form out of habit even when an adjective describing quality is attached — the adjective is usually the signal to switch to the long form.
• Mixing up gender: année, journée, matinée, and soirée are all feminine, while an, jour, matin, and soir are all masculine.
• Using soir instead of soirée on a party invitation, which sounds like you’re announcing a simple time slot rather than an event.

Frequently asked questions

What’s the difference between an and année in French?

An is used for counting years, especially with numbers and ages. Année is used when emphasizing the year as a lived span of time, often with a descriptive adjective.

Do you say bonne année or bon an?

Bonne année, because you’re wishing someone a good year as an experience, not just naming a counted unit — this is why the long form appears in the New Year’s greeting.

Why is it j’ai vingt ans and not j’ai vingt années?

Because stating your age is a counting function, and counting always takes the short form an, regardless of how large the number is.

What’s the difference between jour and journée?

Jour is the simple, countable day. Journée describes the day as a whole lived experience, often paired with a quality adjective like bonne, longue, or difficile.

Does the an/année pattern apply to other time words?

Yes — the same short/long split applies to jour/journée, matin/matinée, and soir/soirée, all following the same counting-versus-duration logic.

Why do party invitations say soirée instead of soir?

Because soirée can mean the evening as an experience or event — a party — while soir is just the plain time-of-day marker, so soirée is the natural word for an invitation.

Is matinée only used for mornings?

No — matinée also has a separate, common meaning in theater and cinema, referring to an afternoon showing or performance, distinct from its literal “morning” sense.

These four pairs are a classic case of a French mistake that sounds fine but isn’t quite right. corrector.co’s free French checker catches an/année-style mix-ups automatically.

Next: Depuis vs Pendant vs Il y a · Pour vs Pendant

The short version

• Bon(ne) is an adjective. It describes a noun and agrees in gender and number with it.
• Bien is an adverb. It describes a verb, an adjective, or another adverb, and it never changes form.

If you’re describing a thing or a person, reach for bon. If you’re describing how an action is done, reach for bien.

When to use bon

• Describing a noun: C’est un bon restaurant. (It’s a good restaurant.)
• Feminine agreement: C’est une bonne idée. (It’s a good idea.)
• Plural agreement: Ce sont de bons livres. (These are good books.)
• Fixed expressions: Bon appétit, bonne chance, bonne nuit — all noun-based greetings.
• Describing food quality directly: Ce gâteau est bon. (This cake is good.)

When to use bien

• Describing how a verb is done: Elle chante bien. (She sings well.)
• Modifying an adjective: Il est bien fatigué. (He’s quite tired.)
• Modifying another adverb: Il conduit bien vite. (He drives pretty fast.)
• Standing alone as “okay” or “fine”: Ça va bien. (I’m doing well.)
• Confirming or agreeing: Bien sûr. (Of course.)

Quick chart

The exception that breaks the rule: sentir bon

Just when the adjective/adverb split feels bulletproof, French throws in sentir bon — “to smell good” — which uses the adjective bon even though it’s technically modifying the verb sentir. The explanation is that bon here isn’t really describing the action of smelling; it’s describing the quality being perceived, almost like saying “it smells [as something] good.” A handful of sensory verbs behave this way: ça sent bon (it smells good), ça a bon goût (it tastes good) — but the moment you’re talking about how well someone performs an action, you’re back to bien: elle sent bien les problèmes would mean she has a good sense for problems, using bien because now it’s about perceptiveness as an action, not a static quality. This is one of the few places where native intuition genuinely outruns the textbook rule, so treat sentir bon as a memorized phrase rather than trying to derive it from the adjective/adverb logic. Worth knowing too: meilleur and mieux follow the exact same adjective/adverb split as bon and bien — meilleur agrees with a noun (c’est un meilleur film), while mieux, like bien, never changes form (il joue mieux maintenant). One more wrinkle worth flagging: bien can also function as an intensifier before an adjective, meaning “quite” or “really” rather than “well” — c’est bien joli doesn’t mean “it’s well pretty,” it means “it’s quite pretty,” a use that has nothing to do with describing an action at all. Native speakers switch fluidly between bien-as-adverb-of-manner and bien-as-intensifier depending on what follows it, and both uses stay invariable, which is part of why bien feels so flexible compared to the strictly noun-bound bon.

Mistakes learners make

• Saying Elle chante bon instead of Elle chante bien — singing is an action, so it needs the adverb.
• Saying C’est bien restaurant instead of C’est un bon restaurant — a noun needs the adjective and an article.
• Forgetting gender agreement on bon: writing une bon idée instead of une bonne idée.
• Overcorrecting sentir bon into sentir bien when talking about literal smell — that one really does take bon.
• Mixing up meilleur and mieux the same way as bon and bien: using meilleur to modify a verb instead of mieux.

Frequently asked questions

What’s the difference between bon and bien in French?

Bon is an adjective that describes nouns and agrees in gender and number. Bien is an adverb that describes verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs and never changes form.

Do you say ça va bon or ça va bien?

Ça va bien. Bien is required here because it’s describing how things are going — an adverbial use, not a description of a noun.

Why is it sentir bon and not sentir bien?

Sentir bon is a fixed exception where bon describes the quality being perceived (a good smell) rather than the manner of the action, unlike most verb-modifying situations which take bien.

Is bien an adjective or an adverb?

Bien is almost always an adverb. It doesn’t agree in gender or number and describes verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs rather than nouns.

How do you say “good idea” in French?

Bonne idée, using the feminine form of bon because idée is a feminine noun.

What’s the difference between bon and meilleur?

Bon means “good”; meilleur means “better,” the comparative form of bon. Le meilleur means “the best.” Bien has its own comparative, mieux, meaning “better” as an adverb.

Can bien mean “quite” instead of “well”?

Yes. Used before an adjective, bien often works as an intensifier meaning “quite” or “really” — c’est bien difficile means “it’s quite difficult,” not a description of how something is done.

Why does bon go before some nouns and after others?

Common, short adjectives like bon usually go before the noun in French (un bon film), while most other adjectives follow it — bon is simply one of a handful of frequent adjectives that break the usual after-the-noun pattern.

Bon/bien mistakes are subtle enough that spellcheckers miss them constantly. corrector.co’s free French checker catches the adjective/adverb mix-ups along with agreement errors.

Next: C’est vs Il est · Encore vs Toujours

The short version

• Passé composé = a completed action, a specific event, something that happened once and is done.
• Imparfait = an ongoing state, a habit, a description, the background of a story — no clear endpoint.

Ask yourself: does this action have a clear beginning and end I could point to? If yes, passé composé. Is it more like scenery or a repeated pattern? Imparfait.

When to use passé composé

• A single completed event: J’ai mangé une pomme. (I ate an apple.)
• A sequence of actions that move a story forward: Il est entré, il a fermé la porte, il s’est assis. (He came in, closed the door, sat down.)
• An action with a clear start or end point: J’ai commencé à travailler à huit heures. (I started working at eight.)
• A sudden interruption: Le téléphone a sonné. (The phone rang.)
• An action repeated a specific, countable number of times: J’ai visité Paris trois fois. (I’ve visited Paris three times.)

When to use imparfait

• A habitual past action: Je mangeais une pomme chaque jour. (I used to eat an apple every day.)
• Background description: Il faisait froid ce soir-là. (It was cold that evening.)
• An ongoing state with no clear end: Elle habitait à Paris. (She lived in Paris.)
• Something in progress when something else happened: Je lisais quand le téléphone a sonné. (I was reading when the phone rang.)
• Politely softening a request or suggestion: Je voulais vous demander quelque chose. (I wanted to ask you something.)

Quick chart

The verbs that change meaning between the two tenses

A handful of French verbs genuinely mean something different depending on which past tense you pick, and these are worth memorizing on their own. Savoir in the imparfait (je savais) means “I knew,” an ongoing state of knowledge; in the passé composé (j’ai su) it means “I found out,” the moment the knowledge started. Same pattern with connaître: je connaissais is “I knew/was familiar with,” while j’ai connu is “I met” — the instant familiarity began. Vouloir flips too: je voulais is “I wanted” as an ongoing desire, but j’ai voulu usually means “I tried” or “I decided to” at a specific moment, and in the negative, je n’ai pas voulu means “I refused.” Pouvoir follows suit: je pouvais is “I was able to” in general, while j’ai pu means “I managed to” on one specific occasion. And devoir shifts too: je devais means “I was supposed to” (with the implication it may not have happened), while j’ai dû usually means “I had to” and did it, or expresses a strong deduction (“I must have”). None of this is optional trivia — get one of these wrong and you can accidentally say “I met her” when you meant “I knew her for years,” or claim you actually did something you were only ever supposed to do.

Mistakes learners make

• Defaulting to passé composé for everything because it feels more like “the past tense” — habits and descriptions need imparfait even when English doesn’t mark the difference.
• Using passé composé for weather or time-of-day description: il faisait beau (it was nice out), not il a fait beau, when you’re setting a scene.
• Mixing up j’ai connu and je connaissais — the first means you met someone, the second means you already knew them.
• Forgetting that an interrupted action needs both tenses in the same sentence: the ongoing part in imparfait, the interruption in passé composé.
• Using passé composé for devoir when the softer “supposed to” meaning of imparfait was intended, accidentally claiming something happened that only should have.

Frequently asked questions

What’s the difference between passé composé and imparfait?

Passé composé marks a completed, specific past action. Imparfait describes an ongoing state, habit, or background scene with no clear endpoint.

Do you use passé composé or imparfait for habits?

Imparfait. “I used to eat there” is je mangeais là-bas, not j’ai mangé là-bas, which would mean a single occasion instead.

Why does connaître change meaning between the two tenses?

Because imparfait marks an ongoing state (knowing someone) while passé composé marks the start of that state (meeting them) — j’ai connu literally means the knowing began at that moment.

How do you know which tense to use when telling a story?

Use imparfait to set the scene and describe what was happening, then switch to passé composé for the specific events that move the story forward.

What’s the difference between je voulais and j’ai voulu?

Je voulais means you wanted something as an ongoing desire. J’ai voulu usually means you tried or decided to act at a specific moment — and in the negative, it means you refused.

What does j’ai dû mean compared to je devais?

Je devais means you were supposed to do something, without confirming whether you did. J’ai dû usually confirms you actually had to (and did) do it, or expresses a strong deduction like “I must have.”

Why is imparfait sometimes used to soften a request?

Because the imparfait’s ongoing, less-definite feel makes a request sound gentler and less direct — je voulais vous demander quelque chose (I wanted to ask you something) reads as more polite than the blunter je veux.

Tense mistakes are hard to catch yourself because both forms are grammatically “correct French” — just for different situations. corrector.co’s free French checker flags the ones that don’t fit the context.

Next: Depuis vs Pendant vs Il y a · Depuis que vs Pendant que

The short version

• C’est goes before a noun, a name, a stressed pronoun, or an adjective followed by de.
• Il est / Elle est goes directly before an adjective, or before an unmodified profession or nationality with no article.

The test: look at the word right after the verb. A bare noun or a person’s name? Use c’est. A plain adjective with nothing else attached? Use il est or elle est.

When to use c’est

• Before a noun with an article: C’est un livre. (It’s a book.)
• Before a name: C’est Marie. (That’s Marie.)
• Before a stressed pronoun: C’est moi. (It’s me.)
• Before an adjective followed by de + infinitive: C’est difficile de comprendre. (It’s hard to understand.)
• Before a superlative describing something: C’est le meilleur restaurant du quartier. (It’s the best restaurant in the neighborhood.)
• Introducing a whole idea or situation: C’est ça. (That’s it / that’s right.)

When to use il est / elle est

• Directly before an adjective: Il est grand. (He is tall.)
• Before an unmodified profession, no article: Elle est médecin. (She is a doctor.)
• Before a nationality, no article: Il est français. (He is French.)
• Talking about time: Il est trois heures. (It’s three o’clock.)
• Describing weather or general conditions in formal register: Il est tard. (It’s late.)
• Referring back to something already introduced by name: Le livre? Il est sur la table. (The book? It’s on the table.)

Quick chart

The trap: modified professions flip the rule

The profession rule only holds when the job title stands completely alone. The moment you add an article, an adjective, or any modifier, the noun rule takes over and you switch to c’est. So Il est médecin is correct on its own, but C’est un bon médecin is correct too, because bon médecin is now a modified noun phrase with an article in front of it. Native speakers do this instinctively; learners usually keep il est out of habit and end up with an ungrammatical sentence like Il est un médecin, which sounds foreign no matter how good the rest of your French is. The same flip happens with nationalities: Elle est espagnole stays adjective-style, but C’est une Espagnole treats “Espagnole” as a noun (capitalized, with an article) rather than an adjective, and both are correct depending on which form you pick. Notice the capitalization difference too — nationality as an adjective (espagnole) stays lowercase, but nationality as a noun (une Espagnole, a Spanish woman) gets capitalized, which is a small but real spelling signal of which grammatical role the word is playing.

Plurals follow the same logic with a different verb form: ce sont replaces c’est before a plural noun (Ce sont mes amis — those are my friends), while ils sont / elles sont replace il est / elle est before a plural adjective (Ils sont fatigués — they’re tired). In casual spoken French you’ll sometimes hear c’est used even before plurals (c’est mes amis), but that’s informal register, not the standard written form — worth knowing for listening comprehension, but avoid it in writing.

Mistakes learners make

• Saying Il est un médecin instead of Il est médecin or C’est un médecin — you can’t mix the article with il est.
• Using c’est before a bare adjective describing a person: C’est grand works for a general observation (“it’s big”), but describing a specific person’s height needs Il est grand.
• Forgetting the plural switch and saying c’est before an obviously plural noun instead of ce sont.
• Translating “it’s” literally as c’est even when the following word is a plain adjective with no noun in sight — check what follows, not what you’re describing.
• Missing the capitalization shift on nationalities: writing c’est un français instead of c’est un Français when treating the nationality as a noun rather than an adjective.

Frequently asked questions

What’s the difference between c’est and il est?

C’est goes before nouns, names, and stressed pronouns. Il est (or elle est) goes directly before an adjective or an unmodified profession with no article. Check the word that follows, not the subject you’re describing.

Do you say il est médecin or c’est un médecin?

Both are correct, but they’re not interchangeable in form. Il est médecin has no article; c’est un médecin has one. You can’t mix them into il est un médecin.

Why is it il est trois heures and not c’est trois heures?

Telling time uses il est by convention, treating the hour like an adjective-style time expression rather than a noun phrase, even though “trois heures” looks like a noun.

What’s the plural of c’est?

Ce sont, used before a plural noun: Ce sont mes voisins (those are my neighbors). Ils sont / elles sont are used before plural adjectives instead.

Can you use c’est before an adjective?

Yes, when the adjective is followed by de plus an infinitive: C’est facile de dire ça (it’s easy to say that). Without that de + infinitive, you’d normally use il est or elle est.

Is c’est or il est used for nationalities?

Elle est française uses the adjective form with no article. C’est une Française treats the nationality as a capitalized noun with an article. Both are grammatical; they’re just built differently.

Does c’est ever refer to a person’s identity directly?

Yes — c’est is the standard way to identify someone by name or role: C’est mon frère (that’s my brother), C’est le professeur (that’s the teacher), both treating the identification as a noun phrase.

C’est vs il est is one of those rules that feels arbitrary until the noun/adjective distinction clicks — then it becomes automatic. Paste your writing into corrector.co’s free French checker to catch the slips while you’re still building the habit.

Next: Quel vs Que vs Qu’est-ce que · Bon vs Bien

The short version

• Savoir is for information and skills — facts you can state, and things you know how to do.
• Connaître is for people, places, and things you’re familiar with.

Quick test: if you can follow the verb with a fact (a whole clause) or with “how to,” you want savoir. If you’re talking about being acquainted with a noun — a person, a city, a song — you want connaître.

When to use savoir

• A fact: Je sais où il habite. (I know where he lives.)
• A skill, with an infinitive: Elle sait nager. (She knows how to swim.) Note there’s no word for “how” — savoir already carries it.
• Knowing that / if / why: Je sais que c’est vrai.

When to use connaître

• A person: Tu connais Marie ?
• A place: Je connais bien Paris.
• Something you’re familiar with: Il connaît cette chanson.

Connaître always needs a direct object. You can’t end a sentence on it — Je connais. on its own is incomplete.

Quick chart

The overlap that trips people up

You never savoir a person. With people it’s always connaître. And you never connaître a plain fact — Je connais qu’il est là is wrong; it’s Je sais qu’il est là.

Both verbs are irregular in the present, so they’re worth memorizing: je sais, tu sais, il sait, nous savons, vous savez, ils savent — and je connais, tu connais, il connaît, nous connaissons, vous connaissez, ils connaissent.

Frequently asked questions

What’s the difference between savoir and connaître?

Savoir is for facts and skills; connaître is for being familiar with a person, place, or thing. If a clause or “how to” follows, use savoir.

Do you use savoir or connaître for a person?

Connaître. Je connais Paul. Saying Je sais Paul is a mistake.

How do you say “I know how to” in French?

Use savoir plus an infinitive: Je sais nager (I know how to swim). Don’t add comment.

Is it “je sais” or “je connais”?

Depends on what follows. A fact or skill takes je sais; familiarity with a noun takes je connais.

Check your French before you send it

Paste your writing into corrector.co‘s free French checker to catch savoir/connaître mix-ups, accents, and agreement in seconds.

Next: C’est vs Il est · Passé composé vs Imparfait