Dialogue: Le Temps qu'il Fait (A1)

Weather is the universal small-talk topic, and in French it is also a grammar lesson in miniature. Every sentence about the weather hinges on an impersonal il — a subject pronoun that refers to nobody and nothing — paired with the verb faire or one of a handful of dedicated weather verbs like pleuvoir and neiger. Once you internalize this il fait / il pleut template, you have the entire system.

This A1 dialogue between Marc and Julie shows the present tense for current weather, the imparfait for what the weather was doing, and the futur proche for what it is about to do — the three time frames a beginner needs to talk about a single day's weather.

The dialogue

Marc : Quel temps fait-il aujourd'hui ? Julie : Il fait beau ! Le ciel est tout bleu. Marc : Et il fait chaud ? Julie : Oui, il fait vingt-cinq degrés. C'est parfait pour aller à la plage. Marc : Tu as de la chance. Hier, chez moi, il pleuvait toute la journée. Julie : Ah bon ? Et demain, il va pleuvoir aussi, paraît-il. Marc : Bon, eh bien profite du soleil pendant qu'il est là !

A short exchange, but every line carries a piece of grammar that a beginner will reuse for years.

Grammar in action

Quel temps fait-il ? — the formal weather question

Quel temps fait-il aujourd'hui ? is the textbook way to ask about the weather, and it really is what a French speaker says — though in casual speech you also hear Il fait quel temps ? or simply Il fait beau dehors ?

Three things to notice:

• Quel is an interrogative adjective agreeing with temps (masculine singular). With a feminine noun it would be quelle: Quelle heure est-il ?
• Temps here means "weather", not "time". French uses one word for both — context disambiguates. Je n'ai pas le temps = "I don't have time"; Il fait beau temps = "the weather is nice".
• Fait-il uses inversion of subject and verb. Inversion is the formal question form. The hyphen is mandatory. In speech, you also hear the un-inverted Quel temps il fait ? or even just Il fait quoi comme temps ? (very informal).

Il fait beau, il fait chaud — faire for weather

When French talks about weather, the default verb is faire, not être. You say il fait beau ("it is nice"), not il est beau. Il est beau means "he is handsome" and would be a strange thing to say about the sky.

The reason is historical: French inherited from Latin a system in which weather was treated as something that happens or that the world makes, rather than a state. The same logic survives in il fait jour ("it's daylight"), il fait nuit ("it's nighttime"), and il fait du vent ("it's windy").

The basic faire + adjective patterns:

• Il fait beau. — "It's nice out."
• Il fait mauvais. — "The weather is bad."
• Il fait chaud. — "It's hot."
• Il fait froid. — "It's cold."
• Il fait frais. — "It's cool / chilly."
• Il fait doux. — "It's mild."
• Il fait lourd. — "It's muggy / heavy."

With temperatures: Il fait vingt-cinq degrés ("It's 25 degrees"). With nouns introduced by du / de la / un you switch to a noun pattern: Il fait du vent / du soleil / du brouillard / un froid de canard.

The impersonal il

The il in il fait beau and il pleut is impersonal — it has no antecedent. It refers to no person, no thing, no implied subject. Compare:

• Il fait beau. — "It is nice." (impersonal il — there is no "he" or "it" the speaker has in mind)
• Il fait du sport. — "He plays sports." (personal il — referring to a specific male person)

Both sentences look identical. Only the verb tells you which is which: faire beau is a fixed weather expression, while faire du sport takes a personal subject.

This impersonal il is the same one in il y a ("there is/are"), il faut ("one must"), and il est tard ("it is late"). Unlike English, which uses several different dummy subjects ("it" for weather, "there" for existence), French uses il across the board.

Il pleut — the verb pleuvoir

Some weather verbs come pre-built and don't need faire at all. Pleuvoir ("to rain") is the most common, alongside neiger ("to snow"), geler ("to freeze"), and grêler ("to hail"). These are called defective verbs: they exist only in the third person singular, because nothing else can rain.

Il pleut — "it is raining" / "it rains".

Conjugation in the relevant tenses:

The participe passé plu is a homophone of plu from plaire ("to please"), but you almost never confuse them in context.

Hier, il pleuvait — the imparfait for past weather

Marc says Hier, il pleuvait toute la journée. The verb is imparfait, not passé composé. Why?

The imparfait describes ongoing or background states in the past — the world as it was, with no clear endpoint marked. Weather is the textbook case. Il pleuvait paints a picture: rain falling, indefinitely, throughout the day. Il a plu would treat the rain as a single completed event: "it rained yesterday" (and now it's done).

The contrast is subtle but real:

• Il pleuvait toute la journée. — "It was raining all day." (descriptive, atmospheric)
• Il a plu toute la journée. — "It rained all day." (a fact reported as a complete event)

In conversation, French speakers default to imparfait for weather descriptions and to passé composé for events that happened during the rain: Il pleuvait quand je suis sorti — "It was raining when I went out". The imparfait sets the scene; the passé composé reports what happened in it.

Demain, il va pleuvoir — the futur proche

Julie answers Marc with Demain, il va pleuvoir aussi. This is the futur proche, formed with the present tense of aller + the infinitive of the main verb. Literally: "it is going to rain".

The futur proche is by far the most common future in spoken French. It is the everyday choice for any event the speaker presents as already on its way — tomorrow's weather, this evening's plans, the bus that is about to arrive.

The alternative is the futur simple (il pleuvra), which is more formal, more written, and feels slightly more detached from the present moment. Weather forecasts on television and in newspapers tend to use futur simple (Demain, le temps sera nuageux sur tout le pays); friends chatting over coffee use futur proche.

The phrase paraît-il ("apparently") is a fixed expression with the same impersonal il — literally "it appears". Useful when you are repeating what someone else said about the weather forecast.

Vocabulary in this dialogue

A few words worth noticing:

• Le ciel ("the sky") — masculine. Le ciel est bleu.
• Bleu ("blue") — agrees with ciel: masc. sg. bleu, fem. sg. bleue, masc. pl. bleus, fem. pl. bleues.
• La plage ("the beach") — feminine. Aller à la plage uses à la because plage is feminine and starts with a consonant.
• Un degré ("a degree") — masculine. Plural: vingt-cinq degrés. The -s is silent in pronunciation, but written it must be there.
• Avoir de la chance ("to be lucky") — note de la, the partitive article, because chance here is uncountable ("luck"). Not avoir une chance.
• Profiter de ("to enjoy / to make the most of") — always with de. Profite du soleil = "Enjoy the sun".

Common mistakes

Anglophone learners make a small set of predictable errors with French weather. Catch yourself when you hear them coming.

The first sentence is grammatically correct but means something completely different. Avoir chaud and avoir froid describe how a person feels (j'ai chaud = "I'm hot"); faire chaud and faire froid describe the weather (il fait chaud = "it's hot out").

English has "it is raining" (progressive), but French uses the simple present il pleut for both "it rains" and "it is raining". Être en train de pleuvoir is not wrong, but it sounds heavy and is rarely used.

La météo refers specifically to the forecast — the show on television, the prediction. To ask about current weather, use Quel temps fait-il ? You can ask Tu as vu la météo ? meaning "Did you see the forecast?"

The participle plu is irregular and short. The same form serves the verb plaire ("to please"), but the auxiliary avoir with an impersonal il always reads as the weather verb in context.

French nouns agree in number with the count. The -s is silent, but it is required in writing.

Key takeaways