Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
French verbs have a large number of simple (one-word) forms. These are composed of two distinct parts: the stem (or root, or radix), which indicates which verb it is, and the ending (inflection), which indicates the verb's tense (imperfect, present, future etc.) and mood and its subject's person (I, you, he/she etc.) and number, though many endings can correspond to multiple tense-mood-subject ...
There are two auxiliary verbs in French: avoir (to have) and être (to be), used to conjugate compound tenses according to these rules: . Transitive verbs (direct or indirect) in the active voice are conjugated with the verb avoir.
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 simple (one-word) forms are commonly referred to as the present, the simple past or preterite [b] (past tense, perfective aspect), the imperfect [b] (past tense, imperfective aspect), the future, the conditional, [c] the present subjunctive, and the imperfect subjunctive. However, the simple past is rarely used in informal French, and the ...
lit. "present yourself" or "proceed to"; a meeting, appointment, or date in French. In English, it generally endorses a mysterious overtone and refers to a one-on-one meeting with someone for another purpose than a date. Always hyphenated in French: rendez-vous. Its only accepted abbreviation in French is RDV. reprise
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).
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.
A Bescherelle is a French language grammar reference book best known for its verb conjugations volumes. It is named in honour of the 19th-century French lexicographer and grammarian Louis-Nicolas Bescherelle (and perhaps his brother Henri Bescherelle).