People, articles, question words

These forty words carry the grammar of the language rather than its meaning, and they are worth learning before any nouns. Nine entries in comes on, which has no English equivalent at all. Its textbook translation is « one » — on ne sait jamais, one never knows — but almost nobody says « one » in English any more, and French says on all day. In speech it has taken over from nous: on y va is « let's go », on a mangé is « we ate », and a French speaker will use on where a written sentence would use nous. It also stands for people in general — on dit que, they say — and for somebody unnamed: on a sonné, somebody rang. English needs « one », « we », « they », « somebody » or a passive, and picks a different one each time.