Level 48 - Food And Drink

When talking about food and drink the main verbs are manger (to eat), boire (to drink) and prendre ('to take / eat / drink'). Here they are in the present tense, followed by a few other key words and phrases:

Food and drink

When talking about food and drink we often use the words for 'a', 'an' and 'some': un, une, du, de la, de l' or des. To revise the different ways of saying 'some' in French see Level 27. In the list below we will stick to le, la and les.

Flavours

A flavour is un parfum (it also means perfume). In French you can give a flavour to something by using the words 'to the' after the name of the object (au, à la, à l' or aux - see Level 25), for example:

* Why is a lemon tart a tarte au citron and not a tarte aux citrons? Because the whole tart tastes of lemon rather than containing several lemons.

Example sentences about food and drink

Notice how we use the word for 'some' when people are eating and drinking some of whatever is on the menu, but if we are talking about the food or drink in general (as in the second sentence and last two sentences) we use the word for 'the'.