Introduction to French Verbs
A verb is the action word in
a sentence. It is the word that says what happens, discusses an action, or
describes a state of being.
All French verbs have to be conjugated - they have different forms depending on what the subject is. In English, we only have a separate conjugation for the third person singular of a verb: I sing becomes he sings. The verb to be has three conjugations: I am, you are, he is.
In French, verbs can have up to 6 conjugations, one for each subject pronoun (I, you, he, etc.)
Verbs come in many varieties: different
tenses (present, future),
voices, and moods. There
are different conjugations for each variety. But don't get discouraged! There
are patterns to the conjugations of most verbs.
There are 5 categories of French verbs
-ER verbs, -IR verbs, and -RE verbs are regular verbs. Regular verbs that end in these letters are all conjugated the same way in all of the tenses. Once you learn how to conjugate one regular verb in each category, you can conjugate the majority of French verbs.
A fourth category is known as stem-changing verbs, although these verbs are actually a subcategory of -ER verbs. They are all -ER verbs that take the same endings as the regular verbs, but their root changes depending on the subject.
The final category is irregular verbs. These are verbs whose conjugations are
unique to them, so you must memorize their conjugations separately. My French verb
encyclopedia has a list of irregular verbs conjugated into all the simple tenses.
More French Verbs
Verb conjugator - Find French verb conjugations
Verb lessons - French verb lessons: tenses, specific verbs, and more
Verb timeline - A chart of all French verb tenses
Verb encyclopedia - Information about regular and irregular verbs
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