Customs and Festivals: Vocabulary and Cultural Proper Nouns

The festival that spells out the rule

This topic asks two things of you at once. You need the vocabulary of celebrations, and you need to recognise five festival names when they appear in a text. What is easy to miss is that one of those names is also a grammar lesson. La Fête Nationale is the French national day. Look at the second word. It is the adjective national, and it has changed to nationale because fête is a feminine noun. The name of the festival is the agreement rule, written out for you. That is worth noticing, because national is one of a small family of French adjectives ending in -al, and that family behaves in a way that catches people out in exams every year. By the end of this module you will know the five festivals, a set of words for talking about celebrations, and exactly what those -al adjectives do when the noun changes.

Five days people mark

The five festival names your specification asks you to recognise. Each gloss says what the day is; that is all you need for the exam.

What each day is

Why Nationale and not National

The French national day is la Fête Nationale, not la Fête National. Why does the adjective end in -e?

• Because fête is a feminine noun, and a French adjective agrees with the noun it describes
• Because it is part of a proper noun, and proper nouns always end in -e
• Because there is more than one celebration
• Because French adds -e to make the word easier to say

One adjective, four endings

French adjectives have up to four written forms. Here is national, and the same pattern applies to local and spécial, the other two -al adjectives in this topic.

Make the adjective fit

La fête _____ a lieu le 14 juillet. Dans ma ville il y a aussi des événements _____ organisés par la mairie. Nous avons une culture _____ et des traditions _____. Pour moi, ce jour est _____.

Which two take aux

Select the TWO phrases that are written correctly.

• des feux d’artifice spectaculaires et des événements nationaux
• des journaux locaux
• des fêtes nationaux
• des traditions locaux

The ending that is masculine only

Here is the single thing to remember about -al adjectives, and it is where marks are lost. The change to -aux happens in the masculine plural and nowhere else. Your specification’s grammar list says exactly that: -al becomes -aux in the masculine. The feminine is completely regular. You add -e for the feminine singular and then -s for the feminine plural, so national gives nationale and nationales, and local gives locale and locales. What goes wrong is that -aux looks so distinctive that people reach for it whenever the noun is plural, and write des fêtes nationaux. Fête is feminine, so that is wrong however plural it is. One quick check will save you every time: decide the gender first, and only then the number. If the noun is feminine, you will never need -aux at all.

Find the festival words

Six words from this topic are hidden in the grid, running across or down. The clues are in English.

Say what happens

Build a sentence about the national day. Choose the form of each word that fits.

The adjective that does not agree

Four sentences about celebrations. Select the ONE in which the adjective does not agree with its noun.

• Nous célébrons des fêtes nationales chaque année.
• Il y a des événements locaux dans ma ville.
• Ce sont des traditions locaux très anciennes.
• La culture locale est très importante pour nous.

Which word fits the gap

Choose the word that completes this sentence: "Mes amis m’ont dit ___ pour mon anniversaire."

• félicitations
• expérience
• société
• intérêt

Write about a celebration

Écrivez un paragraphe sur une fête que vous aimez. Write in French about a celebration you enjoy, using the vocabulary and the adjective rule from this module.

• Name the festival, using one of the five names from this module
• Say when it happens, using the word date or a month
• Use the adjective national, local or spécial at least twice, agreeing each time with its noun
• Include at least one masculine plural, so that you use the -aux ending correctly
• Use the phrase feu d’artifice or tout le monde
• Say what people wear or give, using porter or donner
• Give an opinion and a reason, joined with car or mais