One of the most common verbs in French is a member of the third, irregular group avoir. The conjugation of this verb must be memorized immediately from the moment of learning the language for two reasons. First, it is found in many everyday designs. With its help, they report their age and the presence of something, and also describe many conditions (cold, hot, feeling hungry or thirsty, etc.). The second reason is grammatical: with the help of avoir, some compound tenses are formed, in which it acts as an auxiliary with the main semantic verb.
Meaning of the verb
Translation into Russian of this verb will correspond to the words "to have, to possess something", as well as "to receive something".
In addition to many speech turns, the verb is also included in the il y a construction, which changes in tense according to the basic rules. It has two meanings: the first can be translated as “something somewhere is”, it is used for descriptions and enumerations. The second meaning is related to time and translates as "ago ago". For example:
- Il y a une table et une chaise dans sa chamber. (“There is a table and a chair in his room.”)
- Janette est venue il y a une heure. ("Janet arrived an hour ago.")
Indicative
It includes eight tenses, of which only four are widely used: Présent, Futur, Passé Composé, Imparfait. Consider the features of each of them.
In the present tense, the initial letter of the stem is preserved, except for the 3rd person plural form (ils ont).
In the future tense, the conjugation of the verb avoir is based on aur-.
In Imparfait, the verb has two features: the stem av- and the appearance of compound endings. At the same time, the letters -ai- appear in the singular and in the 3rd person of the plural, when subsequent letters are not pronounced. The letter –i- appears in the 2nd and 3rd person plural before the spoken endings.
In the difficult tense of the Passé Composé, different forms of avoir must be used twice. The conjugation of the first coincides with the forms of the present tense, the second part is the past participle - eu.
Since the verb is an auxiliary in the formation of Passé Composé, you should use it in the present tense as a linking verb, and then substitute the participle of the main semantic verb to get the predicate in the past tense.
Conditional and subjunctive for avoir
The conjugation of the verb in these forms can be memorized with the following tips. The conditional mood uses a stem similar to the future tense (aur-) and the endings are the same as Imparfait. In the subjunctive mood, two stems will meet: ai- before unpronounceable endings and ay- beforespoken.
Imperative
Along with other moods, you need to know how to form requests and orders using avoir (conjugation). French has 2 imperative tenses, 3 forms each. In the present tense there are forms taken from Subjonctif (aie, ayons, ayez). In the past, the II participle eu is added to them.
