Forms  Exercises

Simple Tenses

Tense is the form a verb takes to indicate a particular time period. Roughly speaking, the tense indicates whether something happened in the past, the present or the future. The tense structure of French is quite similar to English, though there is no perfect one-to-one correspondence of one tense to another. 

Tenses are simple or compound, depending on whether the tense is indicated by an ending on the verb itself (simple) or by an auxiliary verb (compound). 

Simple: Elle va, nous allons, ils allaient, elles iront 
Compound: Elle est allée, nous serions allés, il était allé

We shall be limiting ourselves in this section to four simple tenses, whose salient features and equivalents in English are shown below. Compound Tenses are treated in a separate section. The tenses we will deal with here are the present, the imperfect, the future and the conditional present.  The Past definite (also known as the passé simple, and past historic) is dealt with in a separate page.

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Forms

Present tense

Elle mange, finit, vend

She eats, finishes, sells

Elles mangent, finissent, vendent

They eat... 

Recognition 

The present is recognizable mostly by the absence of special endings used on the other tenses. 

Imperfect tense 

Il mangeait, finissait, vendait

He was eating, was finishing, was selling

Ils mangeaient, finissaient, vendaient

They were eating, were finishing, were selling 

Recognition 

Words ending in -ait or -aient are very probably verbs in the imperfect tense.  

Future tense

 Elle mangera, finira, vendra

She will eat, will finish, will sell

Elles mangeront, finiront, vendront 

Recognition 

Words ending in -ra or -ront are likely to be verbs in the future tense. 

Present Conditional tense 

 Il mangerait, finirait, vendrait

He would eat...

Ils mangeraient, finiraient, vendraient 

Recognition 

Words ending in -rait or -raient are likely to be verbs in the present conditional tense.

about the Conditional.

A few examples 

 Les différents producteurs ne voulaient pas travailler ensemble.

The various producers didn't want to work together.

Nos exportations aux Etats-Unis connaissent un boom.

Our exports to the United States are having (literally, are knowing) a boom.

Cette jeune entreprise dominera le marché.

This young company will dominate the market.

Sur deux carottes qu'il produit, une aboutira dans l'assiette d'un Américain.

For each two carrots he produces, one will end up in an American plate.

S'ils réussissaient, ils auraient le marché pour eux.

If they succeeded they would have the market all to themselves.

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Exercises