Lesson 1.10: The Compound Past Tense and Auxiliary Verbs

Welcome to the last lesson of Unit 1! Back in Lesson 1.3, we learned our first verb tense, the present tense. In this lesson, we’ll learn another one: the compound past tense, which is the most common way to talk about events in the past.

The compound past tense (usually referred to by its French name, le passé composé) can be used to describe any specific action with a definite beginning and end in the past.

But it can’t be used to discuss ongoing actions, repeated actions, or general statements: that requires the imperfect tense, which we’ll learn in Unit 2.

Also, être and avoir almost always use the imperfect tense rather than the compound past tense.

While it isn’t the most widely used term, we’ve chosen to translate passé composé as “compound past” partly because it communicates something important about the tense: it’s a compound tense, formed from two different verbs. The first verb is called the auxiliary verb, and the second is called the past participle.

The auxiliary verb

An auxiliary verb (or helping verb) clarifies the meaning of another verb.

In the French compound past, the auxiliary verb is always either être (to be) or avoir (to have), conjugated in the present tense for the right person and number. The vast majority of verbs take avoir as their auxiliary verb.

We’ll assume that you know these conjugations in this lesson.

The past participle

A past participle is a specific verb form that’s used to build past tenses.

Each French verb has only one past participle. Here’s how to form them for regular verbs:

• -er verbs: change -er to -é
• -re verbs: change -re to -u
• -ir verbs: change -ir to -i

Some verbs have irregular past participles.

Putting them together

To conjugate a verb in the compound past tense, conjugate its auxiliary verb in the present tense and add the main verb’s past participle afterward.

The verbs that take être

As mentioned above, almost every French verb takes avoir as its auxiliary verb in the compound past tense. Here is a complete list of the ones that take être instead:

• Aller (to go)
• Arriver (to arrive)
• Descendre (to go down; to get off)
• Devenir (to become)
• Entrer (to enter)
• Monter (to go up; to get on; to climb)
• Mourir (to die)
• Naître (to be born)
• Partir (to leave)
• Passer (to pass)
• Rentrer (to return)
• Rester (to stay)
• Retourner (to return)
• Revenir (to return)
• Sortir (to go out; to leave)
• Tomber (to fall)
• Venir (to come)

They all have regular past participles except for devenir (devenu), mourir (mort), naître (né), revenir (revenu), and venir (venu).

Notice how all of those verbs that take être describe basic types of motion except for naître and mourir, which logically go together. It should be much easier to remember which auxiliary verb a verb takes if you just know that the most basic verbs related to motion, as well as naître and mourir, take être and that all the others take avoir. You can practice choosing the right auxiliary verb by selecting the compound past tense on the Conjugation page.

Participle agreement for être

Finally, there’s a rule that, when a verb is conjugated in the compound past and it takes être, its past participle should agree with the subject in gender and number. Do that by adding the same endings that you would for a typical adjective:

Every past participle uses those endings: there are no special endings like there are for adjectives.

Remember: this only happens when the auxiliary verb is être.

Other auxiliary verb constructions

Now that you understand what auxiliary verbs are, there are several simple but helpful new constructions that you can use. Here are the some of the most useful ones:

• “Can” statements

  Form these by conjugating the auxiliary verb pouvoir (to be able) and adding an infinitive to the end.

  Example: Je peux jouer la guitare. (I can play the guitar.)
• “Want to” statements

  Form these by conjugating the auxiliary verb vouloir (to want) and adding an infinitive.

  Example: Elle veut devenir dentiste. (She wants to become a dentist.)
• The near past tense

  This is another past tense that can serve as an alternative to the compound past in some situations. It’s an informal way to describe events that happened very recently. Form it by conjugating venir and adding de + an infinitive.

  Example: Nous venons de faire les courses. (We just went shopping.) Example: Le gouvernement vient d’interdire ça. (The government just banned that.)
• The near future tense

  This is an extremely common, informal tense for future events. It isn’t the main future tense, but it can still be used to describe pretty much any future event (the “near” part is less strict for this tense than for the near past). Form it by conjugating aller and adding an infinitive.

  Example: Je vais prendre des notes. (I’m going to take notes.) Example: Ils vont arriver à neuf heures. (They’re going to arrive at nine o’clock.)
• The passive voice

  This construction is used to focus on the recipient of an action rather than the agent (the person/thing doing the action). Form it by conjugating être, adding a past participle afterward, and optionally adding par (by) + the agent to clarify who is performing the action. The past participle should agree with the subject just like in the compound past.

  Example: La maison est détruite par l’ouragan. (The house is being destroyed by the hurricane.) Example: Nous sommes bénis/bénies par Dieu. (We are blessed by God.)

  (This construction looks just like the compound past except that it uses être for verbs that would otherwise use avoir. Since none of the verbs that normally use être make sense in the passive voice, it will never be ambiguous which construction is being used.)

Now that you have a few different tenses and verb constructions under your belt, you can try to look out for different ways to combine them for more sophisticated sentences:

Congratulations on learning your second, third, and fourth verb tenses! Since the compound past tense requires memorization for each verb, we offer practice for it on the Conjugation page. To enable it, go to the Words page, select Type: Conjugation, click Add Tense, and add the compound past tense. Then it will be available alongside the present tense on the Conjugation page.

Thank you very much!

And with that, you’ve finished all of Tongue of Fire’s French course that’s been released so far! Congratulations on making it to the end. We eventually plan to add more course content after creating courses for other languages and improving some other features. In the meantime, please use all of our practice features as much as you’d like. Also, feel free to read other online guides to grammar concepts like numbers, additional verb tenses, demonstrative pronouns like ce, advanced articles like du, reflexive verbs, different pronoun cases like me and moi, direct object-pronoun rules, and the subjunctive and imperative moods.

We have full confidence that you have what it takes to become fluent in French. Just remember to practice consistently, immerse yourself when you’re ready, and most importantly, never give up.

Merci pour votre temps, et bonne chance !