Sherlock Holmes solved the mystery

We are going on a mystery adventure, you must be equipped with all the arms and weapons and should know how to use them . These arms are pronouns, articles, questions and all the vocabulry we learnt in seven lessons. Do you know by heart the use of all these? If no then please go through all the previous lessons, you can find them under the label of ‘French’ at the right hand side. You must be wondering what happened to the ‘Triple A’ team? Where are they? What are they doing? Well! Anita,Amrita and Amandine three students from Paris are still on TGV talking to Nolwenn the ‘Bretonne’ lady. The people from the region of Brittany or Bretagne are called ‘Bretons’, ‘un Breton(masc.)’, une Bretonne(femi.).

Last time Nolwenn asked the names of the three girls 'Comment vous vous appelez?' Every time this question and the answer to this question made me scratch my head. It was a big mystery for me when I was learning French because there was always an apostrophe or some pronoun appeared two times like in the question above.

Comment tu t’appelles? Comment elle s’appelle ? Comment elles s’appellent ? Comment il s’appelle ? Comment vous vous appelez ?

Je m’appelle Anita. Elle s’appelle Amrita. Elles s’appellent Anita et Amrtia. il s’appelle Brad Pitt. Je m’appelle Aung Saan Suu kyi.

Those were my very first lessons when I was struggling to adapt myself to French-French learning method, my French teacher told me that I will understand ‘Vous vous appelez’ later on and not to worry about it. My condition was getting worst I could not sleep at night and felt myself hanging on an apostrophe too, so I had to find the answer. I solved the puzzle by translating word to word this question. In French they don’t ask or tell a name like in English ‘What is your name?’ but they say ‘ How you call yourself?’ and the answer is similar too, I call myself Anita, How she calls herself? She calls herself Amrita, How they call themselves? Etc. Etc. The verb used here is s’appeler , this type of verb is called a pronominal verb where the subject performs an action on itself. Ex. Elle s’appelle Angelina –She calls herself Angelina. There are many more pronominal verbs to come but for right now we will not go in too much technical details. Enjoy remixing and matching!

s’appeler
Je m’appelle Tu t’appelles Vous vous appelez il s’appelle Elle s’appelle	Anita, Amrita,Amandine, Brad Pitt Angelina Jolie