​So this here is the meat of the lesson: the correct form of avoir + how to form the past participle. For example, I have answered the question. Welcome to the French simple past tense or passé simple. By George I’ve got it!”… I’m here to burst your bubble. To form the past participle when using  être, the past participle has to agree with the subject of the verb. Jacques Audiard fan. Amazing Avoir: Elles ont passé un an en prison. Past participles of some regular French verbs; French verb Past participle English meaning; manger (to eat) mangé: eaten: travailler (to work) travaillé: worked: marcher (to walk) marché: walked: regarder (to watch) regardé: watched These action words are used when the subject is the same person as the object. With Être: Je suis descendue du train. If you liked this post, something tells me that you'll love FluentU, the best way to learn French with real-world videos. Now let’s have a look at those irregular verbs when put into the simple past tense: Faire –> je fis Venir –> je vins Être –> je fus Avoir –> j’eus. All Rights Reserved. Trust me, you’ll use these rules. Monter I saw it.). You’re dancing in the past tense ( J’ai dansé), swimming in the past tense ( J’ai nagé), you’re even eating lunch and watching TV in the past tense ( J’ai déjeuné et j’ai regardé la télévision). But let’s say the sentence was: Elle a donné les bonbons (She gave the candy). Ils ont répondu (They responded). For other past events, we generally use the imperfect/imparfait tense. We’ll break this down by each verb. (Remember that the reflexive pronoun always matches the subject.). Il a fini (He finished). This is the tense which is most commonly used for describing events in the past in modern less formal written French, and in modern spoken French. (I forgot how to form the perfect tense. With these guys, it depends on the context. Twitter (+ 40 000 followers) Examples: Je finissais mes devoirs.-. Translations in context of "past tenses" in English-French from Reverso Context: Among other things, this course will enable students to recognize and use spoken complex sentences with the correct sequence of past tenses, the structure of hypotheses, and various applications of the subjunctive. Learning French becomes fun and easy when you learn with movie trailers, music videos, news and inspiring talks. Elles ont joué (They played). Frederic Bibard is the founder of Talk in French, a company that helps french learners to practice and improve their french. The shoes! We use reflexive verbs in English, too (for example: “He behaved himself.”). Keep this in mind when you’re rattling your brain to remember which helping verb you need. The majority of French verbs are regular, and forming their past participle is easy: If the infinitive ends in -er, the participle ends in é. Those aren’t words, and that’s because there are a handful or two of irregular past participles out there. If you’ve tried using the regular formation of past participles for verbs like faire (to do), avoir (to have), être (to be), or boire (to drink), then you’ve probably ended up with some bizarre contenders: avoi, etu, boiu. J’ai vu les éléphants au zoo. When you throw a direct object into the mix, these verbs change meaning. If the infinitive ends with an -er, replace the -er with -é. To form the passive tenses in French, être is used, followed by the past participle. Over 100,000 French translations of English words and phrases. (She came in late). In the example, “I have spoken.” is the past participle form while “I spoke.” is the simple past tense. (They brought in a frog). While the other tenses in French (such as the imperfect, future, and conditional) use only a single verb with changes in the ending, the past tense makes use of two parts: The present tense of the verb avoir or être. We talked a little bit about direct objects in struggle three, but the real bugaboo is when you’ve got a direct object pronoun. J‘ai (I have) Le passé exprime quelque chose qui a lieu auparavant à un moment donné. But if you say 'he came down the stairs' the stairs being the object, that is when you use  avoir (il a descendu l'escalier). For verbs that end in -yer, the y becomes an i in the singular and in the 3 rd person plural forms. (She took down her shoes). Please check your email for further instructions. Tip Time: Although it’s not a hard and fast rule, if you forget whether or not a verb is irregular, you can try the corresponding regular endings, –é, -i, or –u, and if it looks funny or is hard to pronounce with too many vowels in a row, then the participle should be irregular. The past tense in English can be identified by the word “have” that often appears before the verb. Some of the verb endings are really weird and some you don't recognize at all! I mentioned that the DR. & MRS. VANDERTRAMP verbs all (with the exception of being born and dying) are motion verbs. To form the past tense, you use this formula: present tense of the verb, The past participle is obtained through using the indicative and changing the endings (-er verbs to -é, -ir verbs to -i, and -re verbs to -u), French Verb Être: Conjugation and Usage (+ FREE MP3), French Relative Pronouns: All You Need to Know About Pronoms Relatifs, Free Resources – Talk in French Free Library, A Quick Background on the French Past Tense. Take for example the past tense which is the center of our topic in this discussion. (I got off the train.) Fortunately, I found a magician to help me. (They returned to the supermarket). Le, la or les will replace the object you are talking about according to quantity and gender, and go before the helping verb. Être is an auxiliary verb which is used with the past participle of several French verbs to form compound tenses such as the perfect or the past perfect. What better way to make conversations with French speaking people? For infinitive that ends with -er, replace the -er with -é. Here are some common verbs and their past participles, most of which use avoir as their helping verb. Just remember the fun little mnemonic: DR. & MRS. VANDERTRAMP. Vous avez (You have) can take anywhere. Compound tenses consist of two parts: an auxiliary verb and a past participle – yes, this is another form of the French verb that needs to be memorized, along with which auxiliary verb to use. J’ai réappris passé composé et j’ai remonté le temps! Calling all beginners and diligent reviewers! You can contact him on Twitter and Google +, How are you feeling? See also: The French Imperfect Tense (Imparfait). It combines the verb être or avoir and a past participle, so remember to brush up on your verb conjugations! The regular form of the past tense is formed by adding “-ed” to the end of the verb: Rentrer (to return) – rentré Thanks for subscribing! Huzzah, I think we’ve got it. Retourner Example: Je suis allé en France l'année dernière. FluentU lets you learn French from real-world content like music videos, commercials, news broadcasts, cartoons and inspiring talks. Before you can compare them, however, be sure that you understand each tense individually, as this will make it a lot easier to figure out how they … So well, in fact, you decide to read some French books. To express a past action, French has two main tenses to choose from. The past participle (participle passé) in French is the past tense conjugation of a given verb. Retourner  (to go back) – retourné (They spent a year in prison). Let’s take a gander at some examples: Essentially, it’s just like the DR. & MRS. VANDERTRAMP verbs, but with your little reflexive pronoun tagging along before the helping verb. Arriver (to arrive) – arrivé Auxiliary verbs follow the same principles of radical formation to which different endings are added to show the subject of action. If you do your math right, it should look like this: J’ai mangé (I ate). download the FluentU app from the iTunes store, 4 Simple Tips to Learning More French Grammar in Less Time, 10 Awesome French Podcasts For French Learners, 9 Great Channels to Learn French on YouTube, 10 Tasty Tips for Teaching Yourself French, 7 Awesome Songs to Help You Learn French Through Music, 15 French Idioms You Should Know But Don’t, 15 French Slang Words Every French Learner Should Know. When forming the perfect tense in French, you use a helping verb: avoir (to have) or être (to be). Luckily, the endings are pretty straight forward: –e at the end of the past past participle for feminine singular, no ending for masculine singular, –s at the end of masculine plural, and –es at the end of feminine plural. For example: Je parlecould mean: 1. If a clear starting point/ending point is given then you may use the passé composé. Nothing to lose your hat over, I promise. 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