French Verb Conjugation: The Basics

Summary: There are a few important things you need to know about French verbs before learning how to conjugate them. First, there are very few irregular French verbs. Second, you need to learn only 6 forms of a French verb. Third, there is a logical relation between the moods, the tenses, or the subject persons. And last, in French verb conjugation patterns, most verbs share a common conjugation pattern with one or more other verbs. In French, in order to reflect the verb's mood an...

There are a few important things you need to know about French verbs before learning how to conjugate them. First, there are very few irregular French verbs. Second, you need to learn only 6 forms of a French verb. Third, there is a logical relation between the moods, the tenses, or the subject persons. And last, in French verb conjugation patterns, most verbs share a common conjugation pattern with one or more other verbs. In French, in order to reflect the verb's mood and tense, and concur with its subject in person and number, the verb is inflected. The set of inflected verb forms in French is known as the verb's conjugation. In English, the infinite tense is built by adding "to " before the verb, while in French, the infinite tense is indicated by adding -er, -ir or -re to the verb ending, as in "parler (to talk)", "finir (to end)", and être (to be). It is important to note that different conjugation rules apply to each group of verbs. Here is a list of all the French pronouns: