The âpassĂ© composĂ© â- A Guide
This is one of the most common past tenses in French, in fact the one that people use most of the time, is called the passĂ© composĂ©, or sometimes the perfect tense.Â
Itâs formed in two parts:
1. The auxiliary verb avoir or ĂȘtre.
2. The past participle of the major verb.
There are two main past tenses in French, but we will only focus on the passĂ© composĂ© in this post, but I am more than happy to make a post about the other called passĂ© simple or Imperfect tense.Â
The good news is that passĂ© composĂ© is the most common tense and that you can express yourself well if itâs the only past tense you know how to use.
You use it to highlight past actions and to talk about:
Conditions in likely situations.
We use the passé composé to talk about one-time, completed actions. This tense places the emphasis on the result or consequences of the action.
For example, you would use the passĂ© composĂ© for having taken a test yesterday, but youâd use the imperfect for having been a student (for an unspecified amount of time).Â
When using spoken language, the passĂ© composĂ© is typically used instead of the passĂ© simple.Â
The Past Participle - What is it and how to form it
The past participle is a form of the verb you want to use in the past in the passé composé.
Like with all French verb conjugation thereâre three types of verbs to look out for; -ER, -IR and -RE but thereâs always verbs that are irregular, Iâll explain those too.
For -ER verbs, just remove the -ER and add é. For example, manger, or to eat, has a past participle of mangé.
-IR verbs are very similar, get rid of the -IR and add an i as the ending. For example, sortir, or to take out or go out, becomes sorti.
To form the past participle of -RE verbs, take off the -RE ending, and instead add u as the new ending. Take attendre, for example, which means to expect, attendre has a past participle attendu.
Finally, there are the irregulars. These require some memorization, but are common enough that once you get used to using them it shouldnât be an issue. Here are a few of the more common irregular past participles that you should take a note of:
prendre -Â To take -Â pris
There are definitely more of these but these are the most commonly used.
If youâre unsure if a verb is irregular or of the conjugation of that verb, look it up! There are lots of websites that show you the full conjugation for every tense.
Forming the PassĂ© ComposĂ©Â
To form the PassĂ© ComposĂ©, youâre going to need to know the present tense conjugation of the verbs avoir, and ĂȘtre memorized. This will be our âauxiliary verbâ In case youâre a little rusty, here it is for you:
To conjugate the passĂ© composĂ© we use the present tense of avoir or ĂȘtre as an auxiliary verb followed by the past participle.
Auxiliary + Past Participle
The verb avoir is the standard when using the passĂ© composĂ©. However, DR MRS VANDERTRAMP verbs use the auxiliary verb ĂȘtre in the past tense instead and I have a whole post explaining what they are!
J'ai fait un gĂąteau pour toi. -Â I made a cake for you.
Ils ont apprécié le gùteau. - They enjoyed the cake.
Il est allé chercher plus de gùteau. - He went and got more cake. - This is a DR MRS VANDERTRAMP verb
I hope this helps! If you have any questions please donât be afraid to send me a message Iâll try my best to help :)
