Emotions in French: say how you feel with être or avoir

Emotions in French use two patterns, not one. Most feelings take je suis plus an adjective, as in je suis triste, while a few take j’ai plus a noun. This page gives the French words for emotions with recordings, the agreement rule and how hate works. For the verbs themselves, see Être conjugation and Avoir conjugation. For adjective rules in general, read Good in French, and for the warm side of feeling, I love you in French.

What are the emotions in French?

The French words for emotions come in two kinds: nouns that name the feeling, and adjectives that say you have it. Nouns first. Press play to hear each one.

The noun meanings for peur, colère, tristesse and honte, and en colère as “angry”, come from Lingoda’s emotions list [11]; soif is the Académie’s “need to drink” [7]. More adjectives: heureux (happy), triste (sad), jaloux (jealous) and malheureux (unhappy) [11], and fatigué (tired) [12]. En colère is a phrase with the preposition en, so you say je suis en colère, never je suis colère [13]. To ask someone how they are, see How are you in French.

How do you say your feelings with je suis?

Use je suis plus an adjective, and make the adjective agree with you. The Office québécois de la langue française (OQLF) says an adjective after a verb like être agrees in gender and number with the subject [1]. So a man says je suis fatigué and a woman says je suis fatiguée.

The OQLF gives the same rule with other subjects: elle est née rieuse, elles rentrent épuisées [1]. For plural subjects, add an s: nous sommes fatigués. Some adjectives, such as triste, end in e already and look the same for both genders.

Why do you say j’ai faim and not je suis faim?

French treats hunger as something you have. The OQLF lists avoir faim as an example of a verb-plus-noun phrase, a locution verbale [2]. So the pattern is j’ai plus a noun: j’ai faim, “I have hunger”.

The same office separates faim from appétit: hunger is a physical need, and appetite is a wish to eat [3]. The OQLF also names avoir peur among its fear expressions, with the example tu as peur qu’il ne revienne pas [4]. The Académie française shows avoir peur as well [8].

How do you say thirsty in French?

Thirsty in French is avoir soif, “to have thirst”: j’ai soif. The Académie française gives avoir soif as an example under soif, defined as a need or wish to drink [7]. Hear the noun here: la soif.

To say you are very thirsty, the Académie française lists grand soif under avoir soif [7]. For hunger it lists avoir grand faim and avoir grand peur in the same pattern [8].

How do you say hate in French?

Hate in French is haïr or détester, and these are two verbs for hate in the French language. The Académie française defines détester as to curse or abhor, and also, in familiar use, to be unable to stand something: je déteste attendre [10]. Hear it: détester.

The Académie française gives haïr with examples like haïr ses ennemis and il le hait à mort [9]. The noun is la haine [9]. The Académie marks a weakened, familiar sense of détester, as in je déteste attendre [10].

Haïr has a spelling trap. The OQLF says that in the singular, je hais, the ai sounds like è and the i takes no tréma. In the plural the a and i are said separately and the ï takes a tréma [5]. The same office says haïr carries the tréma in all its endings except the singular of the present and the imperative: hais [6].

The haïr forms come from the OQLF [5]. Détester is a regular -er verb, so its endings are added to the stem, as with je chante and nous parlons [5].

How do you say I hate you in French?

I hate you in French is je te déteste or je te hais. These two sentences are ours, not dictionary entries: they put te, “you”, before the verb, on the Académie française’s pattern with a pronoun, la méchanceté de cet homme fait qu’on le déteste [10] and il le hait à mort [9].

This page gives the words, not advice on when to use them. For softer, everyday ways to say you dislike something, use détester with a thing: je déteste attendre [10]. In French, as in English, the target matters more than the verb.

Try four questions on this page.

Lingwell is a French-learning app, and you can join its waitlist.

Common mistakes

• Saying je suis faim, je suis soif or je suis peur. These use avoir: j’ai faim, j’ai soif, j’ai peur [2][4][7].
• Not matching the adjective to the speaker. A woman says fatiguée; the adjective agrees in gender and number with the subject [1].
• Writing je haïs. The singular is je hais, tu hais, il hait; the tréma returns in nous haïssons [5].
• Treating détester as always extreme. The Académie française includes the everyday sense of being unable to stand something [10].
• Relying on a vocabulary list from a blog, including this one. The language offices update their pages. Compare each page’s own date with the date at the top of this one.

See also: French slang.

Sources