Differences  Exercises

Auxiliary Verbs

Some verbs are used extensively as Auxiliaries, to help other verbs to build up Compound Tenses. They lose their own meaning in the process. In French, there are two principal auxiliary verbs, être and avoir. Because of their use as Auxiliaries, they are by far the most common verbs in the language.  (The five most common words in our Frequency List are, in order: de, le, être, un and avoir.) 

For a different sort of auxiliary, check out the Causative construction. 

To read anything in French, you must be familiar with the present, imperfect, future and conditional tenses of être and avoir, given here accompanied by personal pronouns (je, tu, il... = I, you, he...). 
 
 

AVOIR	Present	Imperfect	Future	Conditional
I	J’ai I have	J’avais I had	J’aurai I will have	J’aurais I would have
You	Tu as	Tu avais	Tu auras	Tu aurais
He, She	Il / Elle a	Il / Elle avait	Il / Elle aura	Il / Elle aurait
We	Nous avons	Nous avions	Nous aurons	Nous aurions
You	Vous avez	Vous aviez	Vous aurez	Vous auriez
They	Ils / Elles ont	Ils / Elles avaient	Ils / Elles auront	Il / Elles auraient

J'ai deux voitures.

I have two cars.

La grippe a frappé toute la famille.

Flu hit (has hit) the whole family. 

 

Vous êtes mon héros.

You are my hero.

Les prix sont tombés.

Prices have fallen (fell). 

Differences

The most obvious difference between English and French is that French has two Auxiliaries to form past tenses while English only has one. In French, some very common verbs use être as an auxiliary instead of avoir, and this can be confusing. You say Elle a commencé (she began, or she has begun), but Elle est arrivée (she arrived, or she has arrived).

You must be careful not to confuse these compound forms with être with continuous forms in English (she is arriving = elle arrive).

Il est devenu plus pâle

He got paler (not he is getting, which would be simply il devient - present tense)

Elles sont arrivées les premières.

They arrived first (not they are arriving = elles arrivent) 
 

To avoid confusions, you need to concentrate on the past participle (arrivé, devenu = arrived, become). Also, become familiar with the verbs which are conjugated with être in their compound tenses. They are mostly verbs of motion (arriver, partir, aller, etc.) as well as a few others (rester, devenir, naître and mourir). When you come across a compound verb form using être, copy it down in your Notebook on a page devoted to Auxiliaries.

Exercises