Cavorting with Verbs

A verb expresses an action or a state of being. In French as in English, the verb form that is not conjugated and has no marking to indicate a subject or a tense (past, present, future) for the action is called the infinitive form.

English infinitives begin with to, as in to go or to speak. In French, infinitives have special endings, such as –er, –ir, or –re:

aller (ah-ley) (to go)

parler (pahr-ley) (to speak)

finir (fee-neer) (to finish)

être (eh-truh) (to be)

In addition, verbs can be regular or irregular. Regular verbs have the same stem throughout the conjugation, while the stems on irregular verbs change. (The stem is the main part of the verb before you add the endings.) For example, in English, the verb to love is a regular verb because it has the same stem whoever the subject is: I love, you love, he/she/it loves, we love, you love, they love. But the verb to be is irregular because it doesn’t have a common stem throughout the conjugation. The form of the verb depends on the subject: I am, you are, he/she/it is, we are, you are, they are.

Just as in English, French verbs must match the subject (you don’t say, for example, “The children sings”). In French, the verb has a special ending for each subject (I, you, she, we, and so on). The following sections have the details.

Regular verbs

In French, regular verbs — those that follow a set pattern — belong to three large groups, which are determined by the ending of the verb’s infinitive:

The largest group whose infinitive ends with –er: Examples include chanter (shahN-tey) (to sing), parler (pahr-ley) (to speak), and donner (dohh-ney) (to give).

A simple way to conjugate this category is to first drop the –er from the infinitive and add the following endings: –e, –es, –e, –ons, –ez, and –ent. Here is the present tense conjugation of parler:

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Don’t be lulled into thinking that all verbs ending in –er are regular.

Aller (ah-ley) (to go), for example, is an irregular verb.

The group whose infinitive ends in –ir, such as finir (fee-neer) (to finish) and choisir (shwah-zeer) (to choose).

To conjugate these verbs, first drop the –r from the infinitive and add the following endings: –s, –s, –t, –ssons, –ssez, and –ssent. Here is the present tense conjugation of finir (fee-neer) (to finish):

The smaller but important group whose infinitive ends in –re, such as attendre (ah-tahN-druh) (to wait) and vendre (vahN-druh) (to sell).

To conjugate this category of verbs, just drop the –re from the infinitive and add –s, –s, nothing, –ons, –ez, and –ent. Consider the present tense conjugation of vendre:

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Irregular verbs

Irregular verbs are verbs that don’t follow a regular pattern throughout the conjugation. Although the irregular verbs can present a bit of a challenge, you can master them with some practice and a little memorization. The most important ones are the following:

être (eh-truh) (to be)

The following table shows the present tense conjugation of être:

avoir (ah-vwahr) (to have)

The following table shows the present tense conjugation of avoir:

Not only are être and avoir used in many expressions, but they also serve as helping verbs or auxiliaries in making up past compound tenses as we explain in Chapter 11.

faire (fehr) (to do, to make)

The following table shows the present tense conjugation of faire:

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aller (ah-ley) (to go)

The following table shows the present tense conjugation of aller:

For more irregular verbs, refer to Appendix B.

Verbs tenses

Verb tense simply means time. To express an action or a state of being taking place in the present, you use the present tense. If the action hasn’t happened yet, you use the future tense. And if it took place in the past, you use a past tense.

Speaking in the present

When something is happening now, use the present tense. Here’s what a simple sentence in the present looks like in French: Les enfants chantent.

(ley-zahN-fahN shahNt.) (The children sing/are singing/do sing).

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The French present tense can be translated in three different ways, as the preceding example shows. Although you can use these translations

interchangeably, you need to decide which is the better translation for the context of the sentence. For the conjugation of the present tense of regular and irregular verbs, refer to the preceding two sections.

A quick look at past tense

You can express past tense in French in several ways, but the simplest and the most common is le passé composé (luh pah-sey kohN-poh-zey) (the compound past). This tense is made up of more than one component: an auxiliary verb (avoir or être) conjugated in the present tense and the past participle of the desired verb (the form which in English would often end with –ed). Here are some examples:

J’ai travaillé. (zhey trah-vah-yey.) (I worked.)

Il est entré. (eel eh-tahN-trey.) (He entered.)

To give you an idea of what a regular verb looks like in past tense, here’s how you conjugate the verb parler (pahr-ley) (to speak):

Chapter 11 covers the past tense in more detail.

Peeking into the future

To make the future tense, you use the present tense conjugation of aller followed by an infinitive. Here’s an example: Demain, Sylvie va voyager (duh-maN, seel-vee vah voh-yah-zhey) (Tomorrow, Sylvie is going to travel.)

This future form — aller (ah-ley) + the infinitive — is called the immediate or near future because it expresses events that will take place soon or fairly soon. French has another future tense, called the simple future, which translates to will in the English. The simple future and immediate future are often

interchangeable. For example, you can say Sylvie will travel (simple future) or Sylvie is going to travel (immediate future). To find out more about the simple future tense, head to Chapter 13.

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