Verbs

Beginning Verbs 

To understand any text, you're going to need some verbs.  A verb is a word like go, take, give, remember. 
 

 

Verbs, and the rest... Common verbs occur very frequently, they are usually essential for the understanding of a sentence, and they come in lots of different forms.  Nearly all French grammars and textbooks devote half of their space to verbs.  We won't concentrate on them as much, because you don't need to produce them, and recognizing them is not that difficult.  But we do have to deal with them...

 

Forms 

1. Conjugations 

The problem with verbs is that in both English and French they have conjugations, that is, different forms depending on the person, the tense, and the mood. 

In English, the conjugations are usually simple: 

Infinitive: to give 

Present tense:  I give, you give, he gives, we give, they give. 
Past tense:     I gave, you gave, he gave, we gave, they gave 
Future Tense:    I will give, you will give, he will give, etc.

How many different forms of give are there here? 

In French, the conjugations are more complicated, because there are more different forms. 

Infinitive: manger (to eat) 

Present tense: Je mange, tu manges, il mange, nous mangeons, vous mangez, ils mangent. 
Past tense: J'ai mangé, tu as mangé, il a mangé, nous avons mangé, vous avez mangé, ils ont mangé 
Future tense: Je mangerai, tu mangeras, il mangera, nous mangerons, vous mangerez, ils mangeront.

How many different forms of manger are there? 

 

Verb Conjugations Complete conjugations for French verbs can be found in the back of your Collins-Robert French dictionary.  There are also several conjugators on the Web.  Try http://humanities.uchicago.edu/forms_unrest/inflect.query.html http://web-lli.univ-paris13.fr/dyn/Conjugaison

 

2. Regular verbs and Irregular verbs 

Now there's good news and bad news.  The good news concerns so-called regular verbs, which are the vast majority.  Regular verbs have lots of different forms, but they always begin the same way.  We say that their stem remains the same, and the endings change. 
 

Donner (to give) 
Je donne, je donnais, je donnerai, etc. 
Tu donnes 
Il / Elle donne 
Nous donnons 
Vous donnez 
Ils / Elles donnent

Because of this, regular verbs are easy to recognize in a text and to relate to the infinitive (which is what you look for in the dictionary). 

The bad news is that some verbs - the most common ones - are irregular, which means that the first part of the verb, the stem, instead of staying the same throughout the conjugation like it does with all the regular verbs, changes, morphs into two or more forms which are sometimes quite different.

Aller ( to go) 
Je vais 
Tu vas 
Il / Elle va 
Nous allons 
Vous allez 
Ils vont 

Since irregular verbs make up about half of the verbs in any one text (there are fewer of them but they are much more frequent than most regular verbs), this is a little problematic for recognizing them. 

 

Irregular Verb Stems If you are reading a text and come across an irregular verb stem you can't relate to the infinitive (so you can't look it up in the dictionary), use our list of irregular stems to match it.

 

3. Two Irregular verbs 

Here are some sentences  with the two most common verbs in French, être (to be) and avoir (to have).  These are both irregular verbs, which means their different forms (est, sont; a, ont) are difficult to relate to each other. 

Le coeur du système est un calculateur. 

The heart of the system is a calculator.

Sa capacité est assez grande.  

Its capacity is quite large.  

Toutes les routes sont accessibles. 

All the highways are accessible.  

Paul a rendez-vous avec un client. 

Paul has a meeting with a client.

La télécommande a plusieurs boutons. 

The remote control has several buttons.

Toutes ont des disques.   

They all have disks. 

Why do you think you sometimes use est and other times sont? 

4. Two regular verbs 

The most common regular verbs are donner (to give) and trouver (to find) 

Elle donne son avis.

She gives her opinion.

Les autres donnent le leur.

The others give theirs. 

Jacqueline trouve son avis intéressant.

Jacqueline finds his/her opinion interesting.

Elles trouvent tout à sa place.

They find everything in its place.

Did you notice how similar the singular and the plural forms of these regular verbs are (donne, donnent; trouve, trouvent)? 

If elle means she, what do you think elles means (last line)?

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Most Frequent

Here are the 20 or so of the most common verbs in written French.You will find these in almost every text you read, so make sure you quickly become familiar with them. 

One technique is to write each one on an index card, and organize them alphabetically.  Each time you come across an example of the verb in use, add it to the card and highlight the verb in your dictionary. 

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Exercises