Breakdown of Mon colocataire fait rarement le ménage, mais il lave toujours la vaisselle.
Questions & Answers about Mon colocataire fait rarement le ménage, mais il lave toujours la vaisselle.
In French, mon/ma/mes agree with the grammatical gender of the noun, not the actual person.
- colocataire is grammatically masculine when you refer to a male roommate → mon colocataire
- If you are talking about a female roommate, you would usually say → ma colocataire
So:
- mon colocataire = my (male) roommate
- ma colocataire = my (female) roommate
The sentence as given is talking about a male roommate, so mon colocataire is correct, and later it uses il (“he”), which confirms that.
Colocataire literally means “co-tenant,” i.e. someone you share rented accommodation with.
Depending on the variety of English:
- US English: usually translated as roommate or housemate
- UK/other English: often flatmate, housemate, or roommate
It doesn’t specify whether you share only the flat/house or also the bedroom; it just means a person you live with in the same rented place.
Faire le ménage is a very common fixed expression in French. It means “to do the housework / to do the cleaning” in a general way.
- faire le ménage = to do the cleaning / to do the housework (vacuuming, dusting, tidying, etc.)
- nettoyer la maison = to clean the house (more literal; emphasizes the act of cleaning a space)
In everyday conversation, when you want to say “do housework / clean up at home,” French speakers naturally say faire le ménage rather than nettoyer la maison.
With the expression faire le ménage, the definite article le is part of the fixed phrase.
Compare:
- faire le ménage = to do the housework (standard idiomatic expression)
- faire du ménage = possible, but tends to sound more like “do some cleaning” in a more vague or partial way, and it’s less idiomatic in everyday speech
- faire ménage (without an article) is incorrect in this sense
So you should learn faire le ménage as a chunk, like English “do the dishes,” “do the laundry.” The le is simply required here.
In French, most short adverbs of frequency (like souvent, toujours, rarement) are usually placed after the conjugated verb in simple tenses:
- Il travaille rarement le week-end. = He rarely works on weekends.
- Je mange souvent au restaurant. = I often eat at restaurants.
- Elle arrive toujours en retard. = She always arrives late.
So:
- Mon colocataire fait rarement le ménage
is the natural order: verb + adverb + rest of the sentence.
Putting rarement before the verb (rarement fait…) is only used in more literary or emphatic styles, not as neutral everyday speech.
There are two common ways to talk about doing the dishes:
- laver la vaisselle = literally “to wash the dishes”
- faire la vaisselle = idiomatic “to do the dishes”
Both are correct and natural.
- Mon colocataire lave la vaisselle.
- Mon colocataire fait la vaisselle.
The sentence uses lave (from laver, “to wash”), but it could just as well have been written with fait la vaisselle and the meaning would be the same in context.
Vaisselle is a mass noun that means all the washable eating and cooking items together: plates, bowls, glasses, cups, cutlery, etc.
- la vaisselle = the dishes / the washing up / all the dirty plates, glasses, etc.
If you say:
- laver les assiettes = wash the plates
- laver les verres = wash the glasses
you are only talking about those specific items. La vaisselle is the general word for “the dishes” as a whole, which is what you usually mean when you say “do the dishes.”
French uses the simple present tense to talk about general habits and repeated actions, just like English does with the simple present:
- Mon colocataire fait rarement le ménage.
= My roommate rarely does the housework. - Il lave toujours la vaisselle.
= He always washes the dishes.
French does not have a separate “present continuous” form (is doing, is washing) built into the verb; the simple present covers both “does” and “is doing,” depending on context. Here, the adverbs rarement and toujours clearly show we are talking about recurring habits.
You must have a subject pronoun before every finite verb in standard French. Unlike in English, you cannot drop it.
So:
- ✅ Mon colocataire fait rarement le ménage, mais il lave toujours la vaisselle.
- ❌ Mon colocataire fait rarement le ménage, mais lave toujours la vaisselle.
Even though it’s the same person, French still requires il before lave. French does not allow “subject-less” verbs in this kind of sentence.
Like rarement, toujours is a short, common adverb of frequency, and it normally goes after the conjugated verb:
- Il lave toujours la vaisselle. = He always washes the dishes.
- Je suis toujours fatigué. = I am always tired.
- Nous arrivons toujours en retard. = We always arrive late.
So lave toujours is the standard word order: verb + adverb.
These all describe low frequency, but with different strengths:
- rarement = rarely / seldom
→ It sometimes happens, but not often. - ne…presque jamais = almost never
→ It practically never happens, but theoretically it could. - ne…jamais = never
→ It doesn’t happen at all.
Examples:
- Il fait rarement le ménage. = He rarely does the housework.
- Il ne fait presque jamais le ménage. = He almost never does the housework.
- Il ne fait jamais le ménage. = He never does the housework.
In your sentence, rarement suggests he does it from time to time, just not often.
A few useful details:
- fait → pronounced like [fɛ], similar to the English “feh”; the final -t is silent.
- rarement → typically pronounced [ʁaʁ.mɑ̃]:
- The r is the French uvular [ʁ] in the throat.
- The -ment ending is a nasal sound [mɑ̃] (you don’t fully pronounce the final n).
- There is no liaison between fait and rarement in normal speech (you don’t pronounce a /t/ sound between them).
- ménage → pronounced [menaʒ], with the final -ge like the English “measure” sound [ʒ].
So you would hear something like:
[mɔ̃ kɔ.lɔ.ka.tɛʁ fɛ ʁaʁ.mɑ̃ lə me.naʒ].