Auxiliary Verbs – Avoir vs Être

French auxiliary verbsAuxiliary verbs are also known as helping verbs, because they help form compound conjugations. The key thing to remember about compound conjugations is that it's the auxiliary verb which conjugates for the required tense or mood; the main verb is always a past participle.










Imperative Mood Conjugations

French imperativeFrench imperative conjugations are relatively easy, as for most verbs they're identical to their present tense conjugations (without the subject pronoun). In addition, the imperative exists only for three grammatical persons instead of the normal six!



Imperfect Subjunctive

French imperfect subjunctiveThe imperfect subjunctive is a literary verb form, meaning that it's reserved for formal, written French - mainly literature, but also history and journalism.


Introduction to Verb Conjugation

French verb conjugationWhen you start learning French, it's not just French vocabulary you have to get used to - you're also introduced to a whole new world of grammatical terms. For many students, one of the most daunting of these is verb conjugations. Just what is a verb conjugation and what does it mean to conjugate a verb?


Irregular -er Verbs

French irregular -er verbs Technically, there is only one irregular -er verb, aller. But there are three patterns in the conjugation of so-called regular -er verbs that set them apart from the rest.


Irregular -ir Verbs

French verb conjugationsThere are around 50 irregular -ir verbs, but that doesn't mean you have to memorize 50 different verb conjugation tables. Thanks to patterns in the conjugations of most of these verbs, you only need to learn 16.