One of the most difficult aspects of learning French is tenses and verb conjugations. The student has to memorize all 6 forms of personal endings, and given the fact that there are 3 groups of verbs in French, the memorization process drags on even more. So, how to understand and remember the conjugation of French verbs once and for all?
Temporary forms
Out of 16 tenses of the language, only 5 can be called relevant. The remaining forms are either recognized as little used and obsolete, or belong to the written style and are irrelevant in oral conversation. Thanks to this, the task of the student is somewhat simplified, because he can only use the present, past and future tenses, as well as the indefinite past form imparfait to describe unfinished or repeated actions in the past. The last actual tense will be passé immédiat, which allows you to name the action that just happened.
When studying the conjugation of verbs in French, you need to pay attention to the fact that all tenses are divided into two large groups: simple and complex. Forformations of the verb form in simple tenses, only the endings of the original verb change. In complex ones, an auxiliary verb avoir or être is added to them, which itself undergoes the necessary changes.
Inclination system
The conjugation of French verbs will also depend on the mood. There are four of them in the language: indicative for all real actions, imperative for requests and orders, subjunctive for expressing desires or probabilities, and finally conditional, translated into Russian with the particle “would”. Each of these moods is found in all tense forms, although the French use only a part of them in oral speech. Accordingly, based on the meaning of the sentence, it is necessary to put the predicate in the right mood and the right time (present, past or future).
French verb groups
Starting to study the aspect-temporal forms of verbs, the student is faced with both correct and irregular forms. If the regular verbs, and these are the 1st and 2nd groups, obey clear rules for the formation of endings in each specific tense, then the conjugation of French verbs of the 3rd group causes a lot of trouble for students. And although most irregular verbs are divided into many subgroups according to the type of their stem, some of the exceptions still have to be learned.
It is best to start with regular verbs, especially since almost all thoughts and actions can be expressed with their help. All newly appearing predicate words that came from other languages or the Internet,automatically acquire the features of regular verbs of the 1st group.
Regular verbs ending in -er
Let's consider the verbs of the 1st conjugation of French verbs. These include the infinitive (indefinite form) ending in -er. To change them at times, it is enough to mentally cut off the last two letters and substitute new endings in their place. A vivid example of such a case is the verb parler (“to speak, to talk”). The picture shows what happens when it changes in persons and numbers in the present tense ("I'm talking", "You're talking", "He's talking", etc.)
To make it easier to remember the conjugation of French verbs of this group in the present tense, you can visually imagine a boot, inside which unpronounceable endings (-e, -es, -e, - ent) are located at right angles. These are the three singular forms and the 3rd person plural ending. The two plural endings of the 2nd and 3rd person (-ons and –ez) were not included in the "boot" because they are pronounced and differ from other forms in this way.
An exception for this group would be the irregular verb aller ("go, go"), which has its own conjugation rules.
Regular verbs ending in -ir
The conjugation of verbs in French with the ending –ir is not particularly difficult either. They are also considered correct and referred to the 2nd type. This group is not numerous, represented mainly by activities related tocolor: blanchir - “turn white”, rougir - “blush”, although other actions come across, for example finir - “finish”. A feature of this group is the presence in all forms of the vowel -i before the endings. In addition, the 2nd group is characterized by the appearance of a double consonant -s in the plural endings of the present tense, in all forms imparfait, as well as in the subjunctive mood of the present and unfinished past tense in all forms.
You should pay attention to the similarity of the verbs of the 2nd group with representatives of irregular verbs that have the same final letters –ir in the infinitive. Irregular French verbs are conjugated according to different rules, verbs do not have doubled -s in their forms.
Irregular verbs
The widely represented 3rd group of verbs is distinguished by a variety of initial forms and different ways of forming endings. Some verbs in the infinitive have -ir at the end and thus resemble the 2nd group. Other common endings of the infinitive, by which one can immediately determine their belonging to irregular verbs, are -endre (defender - "protect"), -ondre (répondre - "answer"), -re (mettre - "put, put") and many other. Fortunately, the dictionaries indicate which type a particular verb belongs to, and gradually the student begins to distinguish the conjugation of French verbs of various subgroups.
Special mention should be made of the verbs être ("to be") and avoir ("to have"). They can completely change theirbasis, therefore, require memorization. In addition, these verbs are involved in the formation of all compound tenses, which means they are one of the main ones in French.
