Category talk:French verbs with conjugation -er

RFD discussion: January 2016–May 2021

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Category:French verbs with conjugation -er

Redundant to Category:French first group verbs. I don't think there's any distinction to be made here, and French first group verbs is a much better title as it describes the conjugation pattern. Renard Migrant (talk) 15:21, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

These aren't quite the same thing. The above category doesn't include the subclasses like Category:French verbs with conjugation -cer. I personally don't like the name Category:French first group verbs as it isn't obvious which verbs are talked about unless you happen to know what "first group" means. (AFAIK, the first/second/third group division is taught to French students but not to American students, who instead learn about -er, -ir, -re and sometimes -oir verbs.) I think the categories should have names something like Category:French regular -er verbs, Category:French regular -ir verbs and Category:French irregular verbs, which is more descriptive and fits the way they are named in other languages (at least, Category:X irregular verbs exists in many languages). Benwing2 (talk) 20:56, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

• That's odd (at best) as a word like commencer does end in -er. Renard Migrant (talk) 18:15, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

  Commencer ends in -er, but some of its conjugations are slightly different (because they contain a ç) are different than the straight -er conjugations. Aller is an -er verb and its conjugations are way different. Vouloir is way different than regular -ir verbs, while faire doesn't have a great deal in common with regular -re verbs. Purplebackpack89 02:11, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

• Redirect Category:French first group verbs to this (and make similar moves for -ir and -re verbs): "First group?" What the hell's that supposed to mean? I speak French. When I learned it in high school, we learned them as -er, -ir and -re verbs, not first group, second group and third group. Designating one "first", one "second" and one "third" is arbitrary and devoid of meaning. Purplebackpack89 22:13, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

  You can read Category:French first group verbs. I don't like that logic. It's a bit like renaming Category:English nouns to Category:English naming words because a lot of people don't know what a noun is. I mean, that's what they are called. Renard Migrant (talk) 18:15, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

  I don't think this is the same thing at all. Most people are familiar with the term "noun", whereas most people aren't familiar with the 1st/2nd/3rd terminology, which is opaque as to what these verbs represent. "Regular -er verbs" is just as concise and says exactly what they are using more familiar terminology. "Regular -er verbs" will be understandable to all, whereas I wouldn't know what a "naming word" is off the top of my head. Benwing2 (talk) 23:32, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

  Knowing what a noun is on a relatively low plane. Knowing which order of French verbs are which is on a much higher plane, particularly as this is an English dictionary and we can't really expect Joe User to know a great deal about French. Purplebackpack89 02:11, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

To be honest, I think most people are familiar with the word noun, but not many understand what a noun is. Renard Migrant (talk) 13:16, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

@Renard Migrant My point was that a helluvalot more English speakers know what a noun is than what the three orders of French verbs are. Sorry if that wasn't clear earlier. Purplebackpack89 22:56, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

Merge into Category:French regular -er verbs both Category:French verbs with conjugation -er and Category:French first group verbs. The latter two names don't sound very good, and "-er verbs" is in fact what they are generally called. --WikiTiki89 00:53, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

What does the third group become? Category:French regular -ir verbs is obvious enough, is the third group Category:French irregular verbs? Renard Migrant (talk) 13:15, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

I think so. The way I was taught, there are regular -er verbs, regular -ir verbs, a small set of regular -re verbs (vendre, rendre, and maybe a dozen others in -dre, plus maybe vaincre), and all other verbs are irregular. The vendre/rendre/etc. verbs are a small group, and it may not be worth making a special group just for them. Benwing2 (talk) 08:26, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

BTW, the page on vendre actually says it belongs to the "regular -re verbs", which are claimed to include verbs in -andre, -endre, -ondre, -erdre and -ordre and the group is said to be "fairly large", so it might be more than a dozen. Benwing2 (talk) 08:30, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:fr-conj-re is useful though there may be more due to {{fr-conj-auto}}. 'Regular' becomes subjective at this point, which is sadly unavoidable. The problem with vaincre is the -que forms which makes it less regular. But does less regular mean irregular? I guess we'll have to go through these on a case-by-case basis, or just leave them uncategorized. Renard Migrant (talk) 18:12, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, at a certain point it become subjective what's regular and not. It doesn't matter much to me where it goes exactly. Benwing2 (talk) 22:52, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

• Delete and merge. I think there's some trickery needed with {{fr-verb}} or {{fr-conj-auto}} --Harmonicaplayer (talk) 11:11, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

Hello everyone, I'd like to add my considerations to this deletion request. I am an user of the Italian wiktionary, and I use en.wikt basically for consulting, and I must say that, as a reader, I find these categories useful: they provide an insight on the inflection models of the french verbs (on a more selfish note, I use them to retrieve lists of verbs this). That said, I see Renard Migrant's point, but maybe the objection could be bypassed by reorganizing these categories as subcategories of the "group" categories, with a cat tree like:

• Category:French first group verbs
  • Category:French verbs with conjugation -er (which could also be renamed as "French first-group verbs with conjugation -er, or something like that
  • Category:French verbs with conjugation -cer‎ (which could also be renamed as above)
  • Category:French verbs with conjugation -ger (which etc.)

and so on; the same could be made for Category:French third group verbs, which could contain Category:French verbs with conjugation tenir, eventually a "French verbs with conjugation -dre", "-indre" and so on...

there could only be a problem with the Category:French second group verbs, since a category "French second-group verbs with conjugation -ir" would probably be redundant, the only outgroup would only contain haïr (if I'm not mistaken); anyway it could be helpful to differentiate these verbs from the third goup's verbs in -ir, like partir or soutenir...

these were my very personal two cents, I hope you could find them useful... in any case, keep up your great work and have a nice day :). ciao, --12:37, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

• Delete. Catalan has the same alternations, but we still just put them in Category:Catalan first conjugation verbs. They are not a special verb class, the alternation is purely orthographical. —Rua (mew) 13:29, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

• Kept. The underlying templates have been changed, and this is now more useful than it was in 2016 Indian subcontinent (talk) 00:39, 21 May 2021 (UTC)