How to Conjugate "Accepter" (to Accept, Take)

The French verb accepter means "to accept" or "to take." It is a regular verb, which means that conjugating it to fit a specific subject pronoun is relatively easy. This lesson will show you how to begin forming complete sentences in French with the proper use of accepter.

Conjugating the French Verb Accepter

Just as in English, we need to conjugate French verbs to match the subject pronoun used in the sentence. The pronouns are the I, you, he, she, we, and they -- in French, it's j', tu, il, nous, vous, and ils -- of a sentence that forms the subject.

When we conjugate regular verbs in French, it is often a simple matter of changing the ending of the verb. Luckily, accepter ends in -er and follows the uncomplicated pattern of many other regular -er verbs. 

This chart shows you the conjugations for the word accepter in the various tenses and with different subjects. For instance, to say "I accept," you would say "j'accepte." Likewise, "he will accept" is "il acceptera."

The Present Participle of Accepter

The French equivalent to the -ing ending in English is -ant. This is called the present participle and for accepter, it is acceptant. You can use this in various contexts as an adjective, gerund, noun, or verb.

The Past Tense of Accepter

Passé composé is commonly used for the past tense in French. With accepter, the auxiliary verb used is avoir, so you will use a conjugate of that "helping verb" to express the simple past tense of  accepter.

Along with the auxiliary verb, you will also need the past participle of accepter. In this case, it is simply accepté.

To bring these elements together, if you wanted to say "I accepted," in French, it would be "j'ai accepté."

More Conjugations of Accepter

Those are not the only conjugations for accepter, though you should study them first. Once you have those memorized you can worry about a few special cases.

The subjunctive and conditional forms of the verb are used to express mood. Subjunctive mood refers to subjective ideas or those that are uncertain. Conditional mood refers to something that may or may not happen depending on conditions.

Passé simple and the imperfect subjunctive will be used in formal writing. While not necessary to know, it's good to be aware of them.

The imperative form of a verb also expresses mood, but in this case, it is not necessary to use the subject pronoun. In this case, rather than saying "tu accepte" you can simply say "accepte."

Similar Verbs to Accepter

Accepter is not the only French verb that means "to take." It is used more in the way of "accept" or "tolerate" something. Other verbs mean to "take something with" (amener) or to actually "take" something (prendre).

While you are learning how to use the verb accepter, you will also want to look at these other French "to take" verbs. Understanding all of them as a group will help you know when to use which one.