Bonjour! My name is David! Welcome! Follow me on On the one of the most important aspects to learning French is mastering the verb conjugations. Indeed, this aspect of the language compose a lot of challenges to students – especially English speakers because our verb conjugations are unrelated to the French language.
Be sure to check out my new audio verb conjugations!
Best Online Resources For French Verb Charts
In this video lesson what will do is guide you the verb conjugation charts on one of my favorite online resource for French verbs: Conjugation-fr.com. If you want to find conjugation to any verb French – whether it’s regular or irregular – you’ll find the conjugations and all of the answers here.
For example, if you type the verb “parler” (to speak) into the search box you will see a long list of all of the conjugations. While this may look daunting at first actually there are only a few tenses which you will need in your day-to-day speaking.
French Verbs Explained
The most commonly used tenses are the following: present, past, future, imperfect, conditional, subjunctive and imperative.
- Present: This is the easiest tense and the first one that you should learn. You simply use it to say what you’re doing now.
- Past: Referred to as “Present Perfect” on Conjugation-fr.com, this is simply the past tense – or “passé composé” as it’s referred to by many French teachers. When you’re talking about things you did in the past at a specific time use this tense. If you’re talking about something you used to do in the past use the imperfect tense (see below).
- Future: Use this tense for actions which you will perform in the future. Note, there is an easier way to describe actions that you will do in the immediate future. In another lesson you’ll learn how to say, “I am going to” – for example – I am going to eat, “Je vais manger”.
- Imperfect: This is a tricky tense because it does not exist in English. However, all of the Latin-based languages (also including Spanish, Italian and Portuguese) use this tense a lot. Basically, you use it to describe an action that you used to do in the past. Generally, you would have performed this action over a long time. For example, “Quand j’étais un enfant je jouais au tennis.” That means, when I was a child I played tennis. But, because we’ve written it in the imperfect it implies that I used to play tennis over a period of time (which I did!).
- Conditional: This is simply the tense you use when for “would”. For example, “J’irais mais je n’ai pas de temps.” That means, “I would go but I don’t have free time”.
- Subjunctive: This is a really tricky tense that does not exist in English but is common throughout all of the Latin-based languages. When you’re describing a verb that has a sense of demand, urgency or strong desire to be carried out you’ll use this verb. For example, “I want you to learn French verbs very well!” This would be, “Je veux que tu apprennes bien les verbs Français!” (Indeed it do!) In this situation “apprennes” is written in the subjunctive because it’s something that I wish strongly.
Many other tenses such as the pluperfect and second past conditional are not used very often in everyday language. So, for now don’t even bother with these tenses.
One verb tense, the simple past, is mainly used in literature. Thus, it is only necessary to recognize these verbs when reading books.
As a beginner you should start off with the most basic tenses and expand your learning thereafter.present, past and future first and then worry about the other tenses.
In the video I will show you resources for where you can find lists of verbs. Here on LearnFrenchVideo.com I provide pages with basic information on regular ER, IR and RE verbs. These pages have lists of the most common verbs that follow these conjugation patterns.
On French-linguistics.co.uk you can find a list of common French irregular verbs including aller (to go), être (to be), avoir (to have), faire (to do), pouvoir (to be able to), vouloir (to want) and savoir (to know). Furthermore, if you really want to research and learn irregular verbs were deeply you can visit Orbilat.com which has an extensive irregular verb list. The great thing about Conjugation-fr.com is that you can copy paste any verb into the search box and find the corresponding conjugation charts there.
Learning a new language is not an easy task. It takes time and dedication. If you really want to reach a level of fluency in French then it is necessary that you take some time to learn the verb conjugations. Take it slowly, be consistent in your studies and one day you will get these verbs down and speak French very well!
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