Sing along: Farm animals in French

Part ofFrenchSongs and stories

Song video

This song is about a farmer called 'Mathurin' and the different animals that he keeps on his farm – .

You can practise the words for animals in French with this fun song.

Sing along: Farm animals in French

Girl

Did you know?

Did you know that animal sounds in French are different to animal sounds in English?

For example, in English pigs make an 'oink, oink' sound, but in French they say .

Did the song sound familiar? Watch the video again and see how many animals and sounds you can spot.

Here are the words for different animals and birds you might find on a farm:

FrenchEnglish
a donkey
a duck
a cat
a horse
a goat
a dog
a pig
a sheep
a chicken
a cow

'There is/there are' in French

A pig going oink

Which animals are on the farm?

To say 'there is' or 'there are' in French, you say .

– There is/there are

– There is a pig

– There are two pigs

A pig going oink

'How many are there?' in French

To ask 'how many' in French, you say Combien de … y a-t-il ?

– How many pigs are there?

– There are three pigs

– There are hundreds of pigs

comes from the word in French, which means 100.

Possession

Cow

Possession means when something belongs to someone.

To show that something belongs to someone in English, we use an apostrophe followed by s, so we say Old MacDonald’s farm.

To show that something belongs to someone in French, we use the word de after the noun.

FrenchEnglish
Mathurin’s farm
Mathurin’s cow
Mathurin’s sheep
Cow

So you would say:

– Michael’s dog

– Sarah’s cat

If someone’s name begins with a vowel – a, e, i, o, u – or the letter h, you would say d’ instead of de

– André's farm

– Alec’s dog

– Hugo’s cat

More on Songs and stories

Find out more by working through a topic