#diactritics

Salut!

Simple past

The simple past is constructed using venir (to come) de (of/from) + infinitive. It is used to indicate relatively recent events.

Venir is irregular and conjugates as such in the present tense:

Je viens | Tu viens | Il/Elle/On vient | Nous venons | Vous venez | Ils/Elles viennent

Examples: 

Je viens de jouer au foot. | I came from playing soccer.

So "Je viens de jouer au foot." becomes (with better non-verbatim translation) "I [just] played soccer."

Ils viennent d'aller au stade. | They come from going to the arena/field/stadium.

So "Ils viennent d'aller au stade." becomes "They just went to the stadium."

Diacritics

Diacritics, most commonly known as accent marks, are commonly used in many french words. We will start with one of the diacritics used in french called the cedilla.

Ç (Cedilla)

The Cedilla is used when putting a c in front of an a,o, or u in french when the "s" sound is wanted. In english there is a loanword from french that we can use to demonstrate this, façade. Words in french with this diacritic include garçon (boy), français (french), ça (that/it), and leçon (lesson). It is never used at the end of a word. 

É (Acute accent)

The acute accent is used in french to make the "eh" sound in lever and to distinguish it from other accented es. It is most commonly used as the suffix for -er verbs in the composed past (passé composé). For example "J'ai mangé du poulet hier." | "I (had eaten) [ate] (some) chicken yesterday."