Look at these sentences using se laver in Le Présent:
Tu te laves les mains?
Are you washing your hands?
Il se lave les cheveux.
He's washing his hair.
Nous nous lavons le soir.
We wash in the evenings.
In Le Présent, the 'se' part of a reflexive verb changes according to the je/tu/il/nous/vous/ils part.
See Conjugate reflexive verbs in Le Présent (present tense)
SE LAVER (to wash)
| je me lave | I wash |
| tu te laves | you wash (singular-familiar form) |
| il/elle/on se lave | he/she/we/one washes / people wash |
| nous nous lavons | we wash |
| vous vous lavez | you wash (plural/formal) |
| ils/elles se lavent | They wash |
Melisa
Kwiziq community member
21 December 2018
1 reply
Stress on certain parts of a sentence.
In a lot of the French sentences on Kwiziq, the stress sounds like it is on an odd part of the sentence and I can't figure out the pattern. For example, in "Tu te laves les mains?" above, the word laves is stressed in the recording. And the voice doesn't rise at the end like I would expect for a question. Is that how the question would really be spoken in French? Is there a section here that explains which parts of a sentence are normally stressed?
Cécile
Kwiziq language super star
17 January 2019
17/01/19
Hi Melisa,
French is a syllable-timed language, where syllables take roughly the same amount of time to pronounce.
In the sentence you mention your voice would rise at the end to indicate it is not a statement but a question.
Hope this helps!