Breakdown of Je vais accueillir mon ami à l'aéroport.
je
I
l'ami
the friend (m)
à
at / to / in (general locations) / about (what one thinks about / reacts to)
mon
my (mon, ma, mes)
aller
to go
l'aéroport
the airport (m)
le
him, it (masculine direct object pronoun)
accueillir
to welcome
Questions & Answers about Je vais accueillir mon ami à l'aéroport.
Why is "accueillir" in the infinitive here, rather than conjugated like in the rest of the lesson?
This sentence uses the near future structure to say what you "are going to" do. It uses the conjugated verb aller (here as vais) followed by an infinitive. Whenever you have two verbs back-to-back like this, only the first one is conjugated!
If I wanted to say "I welcome" in the present tense, how would I conjugate "accueillir"?
Accueillir belongs to the same quirky group as ouvrir and offrir. Even though it ends in -ir, it takes normal -er endings in the present tense. "I welcome" would be j'accueille.
The spelling of "accueillir" looks tricky. Why is it "ueil" instead of "euil"?
Normally, this sound is spelled "euil". But in French, a "c" followed by an "e" makes a soft "s" sound. To keep the hard "k" sound in accueillir, the "u" and the "e" swap places so the "c" touches the "u" first!
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