|
|
200,000 members! JOIN our free club and learn French now!  Get a free French lesson every week! Recommended: > English translator > Sites for teachers |
Passé composé, passé simple, imparfait and plus-que-parfait are the four most common past
tenses in French, though passé simple is used in writing only. It is a compound tense--it has two parts. The first is the auxiliary verb, the second is the past
participle. Every verb has one past participle that does not change (there are some exceptions, as one will learn
later). There are two auxiliary verbs: avoir and être. One must only conjugate the proper auxiliary, and then merely
add on the past participle. To find the past participle, the stem of the infinitive must be determined. To do so, drop the -er, -ir, -oir or -re, as
usual. Then, add an ending as shown in the following table: Example Verb Remove Ending Add Ending Example P. Part jouer -er -é joué finir -ir -i fini vouloir -oir -u voulu attendre -re -u attendu However, the verbs avoir, être, and faire have irregular past participles. verb P. Part. avoir eu être été faire fait Most verbs form the passé composé with avoir, however there are a small number of verbs that are always
conjugated with être. The most common are: verb example aller Je suis allé au cinéma. venir Il est venu chez nous. arriver Le train est arrivé. partir Elle est partie travailler. rester Je suis resté à la maison. retourner Il est retourné au restaurant. tomber Je suis tombé dans la piscine. naître Je suis né en octobre. mourir Il est mort en 1917. passer Il est passé devant la maison. monter Je suis monté au sommet. descendre Il est descendu du train. sortir Je suis sorti avec des amies. entrer Je suis entré dans ma chambre. rentre Il est rentré tôt de l'école. Unlike English, there is a literary past tense, used when writing formally. This past tense is named the passé
simple. It is relatively simple to predict when to use this tense; for every occurrence of the passé composé in
conversational French, one simply uses the passé simple in literary French. To conjugate in this tense, one finds the stem and appends the following, as according to the table: Subject Add Ending Conjugated Verb Je -ai dansai Tu -as dansas Il / Elle / On -a dansa Nous -âmes dansâmes Vous -âtes dansâtes Ils / Elles -èrent dansèrent In order to congugate the imperfect, jouer (to play) The plus-que-parfait is used when there are two occurrences in the past and one wants to symbolise that one
occurrence happened before the other. In English, this is used in a phrase like "I had given him the toy before he went
to sleep." In this example, there are two past tenses, but they occur at different times. The plus-que-parfait can be
used to indicate the occurrence of one before the other. In French, the plus-que-parfait is formed by conjugating the auxiliary verb in the imparfait and adding the
past participle. So to conjugate je mange (I eat) in the plus-que-parfait, one finds the appropriate auxiliary
verb (avoir), conjugates it (avais) and finds the past participle of manger (mangé). So, the
conjugation of Je mange in the plus-que-parfait becomes j'avais mangé or, in English, I had
eaten. J'ai parlé français. I spoke French (on one particular occasion). Je parlais français. I spoke French (during a period of time, and I don't speak French any more). Nous avons réussi l'examen. We passed the test. Il a été mon ami. He was my friend (and he is not my friend any more) Il était mon ami lorsque... He was my friend when . . . Ils ont fait leurs devoirs. They did their homework. Il est venu. He came (and I don't need to say when) Il vint le lendemain. He came the day after. Il venait tous les jours. He came/used to come every day. Il était déjà venu. He had already come. While the subject of a sentence initiates an action (the verb), the direct object is the one that is affected by the action. A
direct object pronoun is used to refer to the direct object of a previous sentence: Pierre mange du pain. Pierre eats some bread. Pierre le mange. Pierre eats it. The following table shows the various types of direct object pronouns: me/ m' me te/ t' you le/ l' he, it la/ l' she, it nous us vous you les them Notes: An indirect object is an object that would be asked for with To whom...? or From whom...?. It is called
indirect because it occurs usually together with a direct object which is affected directly by the action: L'homme donne du pain à Pierre. The man gives some bread to Pierre. Il lui donne du pain. He gives bread to him. The following table shows the various types of direct object pronouns: me/ m' me te/ t' you lui he, she, it nous us vous you leur them Notes: The bread is given by the man (direct). Pierre gets the given apple (indirect). |
