Verbs -Basic Grammar
French Verbs
You should be aware that there are irregular verbs and verbs ending in ...ER, ...IR,...RE, ...OIR.
BE AWARE also that in French in the PRESENT tense there is NO ...ising, ...aming, ...areing.
Consider the verb aller (to go). In English we would conjugate this verb as below. First in the singular then in the plural. You should also be aware of the use of the pronouns.
I go
You go
He/she/it/one goes
We go
You go
They go
Alternatively we could say;
I am going
You are going
He/she/it/one is going
We are going
You are going
They are going
Firstly, let's get rid of the alternative form above. It does not exist in French. It suggests we are using parts of the verb to be, am, is and are.
Now, let's turn to the French conjugation of verbs using the verb PARLER, to speak.
French verbs have a STEM and an ENDING. Parler is a verb ending in ER.
Conjugating PARLER looks like this, with the STEM in black and the ENDING in red.
Je PARLE
Tu PARLES
Il/Elle/On PARLE
Nous PARLONS
Vous PARLEZ
Ils/Elles/On PARLENT
1. ALL verbs ending in ER have the same person endings E, ES, E, ONS, EZ, ENT.
2. Verbs with IR, RE, OIR endings have different person endings.
3. When writing it is important to know these endings.
4. When speaking and listening it is not quite so important, we shall be focusing on SOUNDS.
On the next page I shall introduce you to the short and the long boxes for verb endings based solely on the way the endings are pronounced. Of the six variations above we can reduce this down to three.
The SHORT Box...ALL endings pronounced the same in the SHORT Box
Je ParlE
Tu ParlES
Il ParlE
Ils/Elles/On/ParlENT
The LONG Box
Nous ParlONS
Vous ParlEZ
A very SIMILAR approach extends to IR, RE and OIR endings, not just verbs ending in ER.
The endings will be different with differences within each group but the principle applies.