Introduction to French verbs
Introduction to French verbs
How to conjugate verbs in Molière’s language: Introduction to French verbs
BlogLanguagesFrenchEverything You Need To Know About French Conjugation
Introduction to French verbs
What are the most commonly used verb tenses in French?
The most common French verbs
How to learn irregular verbs
Take classes to improve your French conjugation
“The conditional is the most beautiful tense in the world, and it is clearly the most comfortable” – Paule Saint-Onge.
To learn the French conjugation, you have to be both rigorous and meticulous: since, among other things, you have to learn the endings of each tense by heart for all the verbs and memorize the irregular verbs.
Here are some tips so that you can master the verb tenses and modes of the French conjugation : from the indicative to the conditional, through the subjunctive and the imperative.
Introduction to French verbs: Introduction to French verbs
However, before looking at French conjugation in detail, let’s make a brief introduction to verbal grammar.
In French, as in other languages, words are classified into different categories: verb, noun, adjective, adverb, preposition, etc. The verb is distinguished from the rest of the categories by indicating the action that the noun performs. Likewise, it serves as a link between the different nouns, since if we eliminate it, the words will lack connection between them and, therefore, meaning.
Each verb can have a great variety of forms that are called ” conjugation . ” Thanks to these forms, we can indicate the person, the number, the time, the mode or the voice.
The reality designated by a verb develops in time . For example, if we take the sentence ” Le professeur enseigne la grammaire aux élèves ” (the teacher teaches the students grammar) as an example, we will see that the objects designated by “professeur”, “grammaire” and “élèves” are considered stable in the weather. However, the process indicated by the verb “enseigner” does develop in time, in the present in this particular case.
Do you want to learn French conjugation but don’t even know where to start?: Introduction to French verbs
What are the six verbal categories?
The conjugation allows us to indicate different questions: the person, the number, the time, the aspect, the manner and the voice. All these questions are collected under the name of «verbal categories», which are combined to obtain a certain verb form:
Nous travaillons
1. The person: Introduction to French verbs
The variations according to the person are specific to the verb and the personal pronoun (or noun). These different forms refer to the agreement between the subject and the verb they accompany. In this way, the person who performs the action designated by the verb is indicated. There are three different forms: first ( je and nous), second (you and vous), third ( il, elle, ils and elles).
2. The number: Introduction to French verbs
The category of number is common to the verb, the noun, the adjectives that accompany the noun (or nouns) and the pronouns. In the case of the verb, the number is associated with the person. In this way, the subject will be the one who also determines the number through the agreement .
In this way, the variations suffered by the noun will also be indicated in the number of people designated by the subject. We find two numbers in French: the singular ( je, tu, il, elle and on ) and the plural ( nous, vous, ils and elles ).
3. The weather: Introduction to French verbs
The action that the verb designates is situated in time in relation to a moment about which we refer, which can correspond to the present , rigorously separated from what is prior (the past ) or from what is later (the future ).
The set of differences between the different moments in which the action can be carried out is called ” verb tense “, a name that is also used to refer to each of the different forms such as the present, the imperfect or the Simple future.
4. The appearance
The development of the action is also given by the verb, regardless of its position with respect to the present. This indication of the way in which the action unfolds is what constitutes the category of ” aspect .” In this way, for example, we can indicate whether the temporal limits of the action are taken into account or not:
Alfred travailla . (simple passé) Alfred travaillait . (oddfait)
In these two sentences, the action is in the past. However, the two sentences have a different meaning. In the first, the action of travailler (work) is limited: we could specify the moment in which the action starts or ends. The second sentence, however, is not so concerned with the temporal limits of the action. In this way, we speak of a limiting aspectual value (for the simple passé ) and a non-limiting one (for the imperfect).
Note: one of the peculiarities (and, of course, the difficulties) of the French conjugation is that, contrary to what we observe in other languages, the indications of time and aspect are given by the same forms, sometimes quite complex.
Do you know that you can also learn all this in an online French course ?
5. The mode
The category of the mode groups the “personal modes”, which include the category of the person, and the “impersonal modes”, which do not.
In French, there are three personal modes : indicative, subjunctive and imperative.
There are three impersonal modes : the infinitive, the participle, and the gerund.
6. The voice
This verbal category allows to indicate in a certain way how the subject participates in the action designated by the verb. In French, the verb has two different types: active voice and passive voice.
The active voice: the subject is the agent of the action, that is, the one who carries it out. Le gros chat dévore les petites souris.
The passive voice: the subject is the patient of the action, that is, the one who suffers it. Les petites souris are devoured by the great chat .
In the active voice, the object complement of the verb ( les petites souris ) becomes the subject when we pass the sentence to the passive voice. For its part, the subject of the active verb ( le gros chat ) becomes the agent complement of the passive verb (par le gros chat).
