How to give your opinion in French

In 3 Minute French — Course 1, we learn a handy way to give your opinion in French, but what other ways are there?

In lesson 3 of the first 3 Minute French course, we learn the phrase “pour moi”. Initially, we learn that it means “for me”, however, a little later on, we discover that you can use “pour moi” as a way of giving your opinion.

In English, we don’t tend to say things like, “For me, it’s good”, but in French, you do. It’s very common to say, “pour moi” followed by a statement that reveals your opinion. Because of the fact that we don’t really use “for me” in this way in English, we can translate it into English using “I think” or “in my opinion”.

• Pour moi, c’est bon — I think it’s good / In my opinion, it’s good
• Pour moi, ça c’est fantastique — I think that is fantastic
• Pour moi, la nourriture est terrible — In my opinion, the food is terrible
• Pour moi, tout est parfait — I think everything is perfect
• Pour moi, la musique est trop forte — I think the music is too loud

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I think it’s here

Now, whilst you can use “pour moi” to give your opinion on something, and you can translate it into English as “I think”, you can’t translate every utterance of “I think” into French using “pour moi”.

If you look at these two sentences:

• I think it’s good
• I think it’s here

The first sentence is an opinion, whereas the second sentence isn’t. You can tell because you can replace “I think” with “in my opinion” in the first sentence, and it still makes sense, whereas if you said, “in my opinion, it’s here”, it makes no sense. When you say, “I think it’s here”, you’re saying what you believe to be correct.

So, how do you say that in French?

Je pense que…

The phrase “je pense que” literally means “I think that”, and you can use it for every instance you want to say what you think. You can use it for opinions and also when you’re saying something that you think is true. In French, you have to say the “que”…