Language

Conjugating a verb means changing its form to match who is doing the action and when. Most languages adjust the ending or stem for person, number, and tense — for example English “I walk” but “she walks,” and Spanish “hablo,” “hablas,” “habla” for I, you, and he/she speak.

Cases are different forms a noun, pronoun, or adjective takes to show its role in the sentence — subject, direct object, possessor, and so on. English shows this only faintly (“he” versus “him”), but languages like German, Russian, and Latin mark it heavily, which is why the same word can look different depending on how it is used.

False friends are words that look or sound alike across two languages but mean different things. For instance, Spanish “embarazada” means pregnant, not embarrassed, and French “librairie” means bookshop, not library — so cognates are helpful but cannot always be trusted.

Standard French keeps traces of an old base-20 (vigesimal) counting system. So 70 is “soixante-dix” (sixty-ten), 80 is “quatre-vingts” (four twenties), and 90 is “quatre-vingt-dix” (four-twenties-ten). Belgian and Swiss French simplify this with “septante,” “huitante/octante,” and “nonante.”