Jouer vs Faire + Sport - Memorize Only Or Pattern?

[fathom stratus]

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Jouer vs Faire

Jouer vs Faire + Sport - Memorize Only Or Pattern?

[topaz lotus]

Looking at the examples shared, it seems like any sport that involves a ball of some sort moves a ball or small object of some kind. Is this a safe assumption?

[true sonnet]

jouer has an additional context of games so usually if the sport is mostly competitive, jouer is your go-to

[topaz lotus]

Hmm well cycling and boxing is competitive but uses faire

[true sonnet]

for example when you swim you don’t necessarily compete; you can just be swimming in a lake along whereas when you play basketball you are competing

[topaz lotus]

But I noticed anything with a ball or puck in the table always has jouer

[true sonnet]

Do note that you can use faire here

But because it doesn’t have that game connotation, the meaning is a bit different

[topaz lotus]

I think any sport is competitive right?

[true sonnet]

jouer au foot sounds like you’re going off to play a match

faire du foot sounds you’re training or you’re used to playing football

[true sonnet]

It can be but not necessarily

[topaz lotus]

So are these tables bad? I feel like the explanations for when to use faire or sport on these sites are kind of bad

[true sonnet]

No, they just show the most common verb to use

[topaz lotus]

Gotcha, I think I'll just stick with think of the sports that use jouer more often happen to involve an object moving

All of the sports shown can have competitive aspects, so looking at it that way doesn't help me

[true sonnet]

I suppose competitive is the wrong word, maybe playing against other people

While all sports can be competitive, not all can be done recreationally

For example, you can definitely compete in biking

But you can also bike recreationally

With yourself just cycling

Whereas you can’t really do that with football or tennis

That being said, it’s what I feel like and it’s not an absolute rule

[topaz lotus]

Hmm I guess my next question is this, are there any sports above that cannot use both verbs?

I think I have an idea of how to remember of what verb is more common to use with these sports, but I want to make sure I'm understanding whether both can be used or not

[true sonnet]

It’s not an issue of ability but frequency, I suppose. For example, biking uses faire but can use jouer like in this context:

Celui qui "joue" au cyclisme plus qu'il n'en fait pourrait donc s'amuser à cocher toutes les courses par étapes du calendrier World Tour. Pour le moment, il n'a remporté "que" le Tour des Émirats arabes unis (2021, 2022 et 2025), Tirreno-Adriatico (2021 et 2022), Paris-Nice (2023) et le Tour de Catalogne (2024).
https://www.france24.com/fr/sports/20250329-cyclisme-pogacar-paris-roubaix-12-travaux-du-slovene-egaler-eddy-merckx

However, most people will still use faire

[topaz lotus]

Yeah I just wanted to make sure I understood it was a frequency thing but both are allowed, thanks for that!

[true sonnet]

Other way around:
https://www.hydratis.co/blogs/blog/quelle-boisson-prendre-quand-on-fait-du-tennis

[topaz lotus]

I wrote out a paragraph to practice vocabulary and grammar covered in my textbook, which channel do I place text like that for review?

I feel pretty good about it, but I was wondering where I could put text like that

[true sonnet]

#salle-de-classe is good for text correction as well