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The passé composé is formed by the auxiliary verb, usually the avoir auxiliary, followed by the past participle.The construction is parallel to that of the present perfect (there is no difference in French between perfect and non-perfect forms - although there is an important difference in usage between the perfect tense and the imperfect tense).
Present perfect (passé composé): literally "compound past", formed with an auxiliary verb in the present; Imperfect (imparfait), simple; Pluperfect (plus-que-parfait): literally "more than perfect", formed with an auxiliary verb in the imperfect
Aside from être and avoir (considered categories unto themselves), French verbs are traditionally [1] grouped into three conjugation classes (groupes): . The first conjugation class consists of all verbs with infinitives ending in -er, except for the irregular verb aller and (by some accounts) the irregular verbs envoyer and renvoyer; [2] the verbs in this conjugation, which together ...
The indicative mood makes use of eight tense-aspect forms. These include the present (présent), the simple past (passé composé and passé simple), the past imperfective , the pluperfect (plus-que-parfait), the simple future (futur simple), the future perfect (futur antérieur), and the past perfect (passé antérieur). Some forms are less ...
French orthography encompasses the spelling and punctuation of the French language.It is based on a combination of phonemic and historical principles. The spelling of words is largely based on the pronunciation of Old French c. 1100 –1200 AD, and has stayed more or less the same since then, despite enormous changes to the pronunciation of the language in the intervening years.
The Compagnons du Devoir (French pronunciation: [kɔ̃paɲɔ̃ dy dəvwaʁ]), full name Compagnons du Devoir et du Tour de France ([kɔ̃paɲɔ̃ dy dəvwaʁ e dy tuʁ də fʁɑ̃s]), is a French organization of craftsmen and artisans dating from the Middle Ages.
The passé simple (French pronunciation: [pase sɛ̃pl], simple past, preterite, or past historic), also called the passé défini (IPA: [pase defini], definite past), is the literary equivalent of the passé composé in the French language, used predominantly in formal writing (including history and literature) and formal speech.
Likewise, the former medieval diphthong "eu" when pronounced /y/ would often, in the 18th century, take a circumflex in order to distinguish homophones, such as deu → dû (from devoir vs. du = de + le); creu → crû (from croître vs. cru from croire) ; seur → sûr (the adjective vs. the preposition sur), etc. cruement → crûment; meur ...