Reflexive verbs

Infinitive verb (a verb in its original form, not conjugated)

When the verb keeps its ending, it is in its infinitive form. Examples of infinitives would be: manger (to eat),

vendre (to sell), and choisir (to choose).

When a verb is conjugated, it drops its ending (the -er, -re, or -ir) and the stem (the remaining part of the

word) is given a new ending based on the subject.

.
Common Irregular Verbs

It is worth saying, however, that there are always exceptions. Not all verbs that end in -er, -re, and -ir are

regular. For example, aller, dire, and venir are not regular verbs but their endings might lead you to

believe that they are.

Reflexive Verbs

Before I move on to expressing things that have happened in the past or that will happen in the future,

there’s one more group that is worth mentioning: reflexive verbs.

Reflexive verbs are identified by their need for a reflexive pronoun because they show that an action is

performed upon itself/the subject. Some verbs are always reflexive while others always require the

reflexive pronoun.

The reflexive pronoun agrees with the subject, so it’s important to remember to change it based on the

subject of the sentence. The pronoun precedes the verb. Examples are s’appeler (to call), se lever (to get

up), and se dépêcher (to hurry).

Future

There are a few different ways to discuss the future in French, but they would each require you to learn

an entirely new set of conjugations for each verb (which you might eventually need to do), but for now,

especially at the beginning stage, there’s an easy shortcut you can use to express the near future using

verbs and conjugations you likely already know. In fact, we even use this shortcut in English whenever we

say “I’m going to do something”. It’s:

Subject + to go + thing that will be done in the future

Subject + aller (conjugated to match the subject) + infinitive verb

In order to create this, we just need to know how to conjugate one verb in present tense – to go or “aller”.

We can now express things we are going to do in the future. For example:

Je vais voyager. I am going to travel.

Vous allez manger. You are going to eat.

Elle va acheter un stylo. She is going to buy a pen .

The Past

Much like the future tense, there’s a pretty simple hack that you can use to avoid using any of the actual

French tenses (imparfait, passé simple, passé composé, and past conditional) and I’ll introduce this before

I talk a bit about passé composé in the second post in this series, one of the tenses that I think can be the

most confusing.

The shortcut for discussing something that immediately happened in the past is similar to saying someone

has just done something in English. The formula is:

Subject + to come + from + the thing that was recently done

Subject + venir (conjugated to match the subject) + de + infinitive verb

Once again, to create this, we only need to be able to conjugate one verb, in this case, to come or “venir”.

And now we can express things that we have recently done in the past. For example:

 Je viens de voyager. I just traveled.

Vous venez de manger. You just ate.

Elle vient d’acheter un stylo. She just bought a pen.

Je parle could mean:

 I speak
 I am speaking
 I do speak

Using “être + en train de” to emphasize that you are in the midst of doing something is an easy way to
distinguish between “I speak” or “Je parle” and “I am speaking” or “Je suis en train de parler”.

If you want to skip learning a ton of verb conjugations and just talk about what you are in the process of

doing, you can do so quite effectively by learning how to conjugate être (to be) and the infinitives of the verbs

that you think you’ll need to use. The formula for this would be:

Subject + to be + in the process of + whatever you’re in doing

Subject + être (conjugated to fit the subject) + en train de + infinitive verb (a verb in its original form, not

conjugated)

Some examples of this might be:

Je suis en train de voyager. I are in the middle of traveling.

Vous êtes en train de manger. You are in the process of eating.

Elle est en train d’acheter un stylo. She is in the middle of buying a pen.
When studying French grammar, the first step is always learning the indicative form of the verbs.

You can use the indicative directly to state recent past, near future and ongoing actions without learning the

other complicated tenses.

For non-French speakers, this can be an easier, faster way to learn to speak French, and it is also a great

prerequisite to learning the other tenses.

 The irregular verbs venir and aller can be used to express the recent past and the near future,

respectively.

 The expression être en train de is often used to talk about an ongoing action.

 All three verbs and expressions are commonly used in informal speech.

 All three verbs and expressions precede the infinitive form of the action being referred to.

 Venir, aller, and être are all in their present forms when used in the recent past, the near future, and the

progressive, respectively.

How to use venir in recent past

The format is simple. All you have to do is form a sentence construction using this formula:

The conjugated present form of ‘venir’ + de + the infinitive form of the action that recently happened.

Viens de is the closest thing in English to the word “just”.

For example: “Je viens de manger” which means“I just ate” in English.

Note that by using the word “just”, you are expressing yourself casually and informally by telling someone of a

recent action that you did.

This is basically the same logic behind the use of viens de.

Some examples when used

 For first person singular — Je viens de manger. (I just ate.)

 For second person singular — Tu viens de manger. (You just ate.)

 For third person singular — Il vient de manger. (He just ate.)

  For first person plural — Nous venons de manger. (We just ate.)

 For second person plural —Vous venez de manger. (You just ate.)

 For third person plural —Ils viennent de manger. (They just ate.)

How to use aller in near future

This is basically the same with the previous discussion on venir. Simply follow the following format in using

aller to express near future actions.

The conjugated present form of ‘aller’ + the infinitive form of the action that is about to happen.

Aller in its present form can be literally translated in English to mean “going to”.

Here are the correct conjugations for aller.

Some examples when used

 For first person singular — Je vais partir dans cinq minutes. (I am going to leave in five minutes.)

 For second person singular — Tu vas partir dans cinq minutes.(You are going to leave in five

minutes.)

 For third person singular — Il va partir dans cinq minutes.(He is going to leave in five minutes.)

 For first person plural — Nous allons partir dans cinq minutes.(We are going to leave in five

minutes.)
  For second person plural — Vous allez partir dans cinq minutes.(You are going to leave in five

minutes.)

 For third person plural —Ils vont partir dans cinq minutes.(They are going to leave in five minutes.)

Expressing ongoing action using the expression être en train de

Unlike English, the French language does not have a direct counterpart of the present progressive verb form.

The simple present tense is often used in French to mean both simple present and present progressive.

Example: Je parle which literally means ‘I speak’ can also be used to mean ‘I am speaking’.

But to speak precisely, however, you can always use the French expression être en train de which literally

means to be _____-ing, to be in the middle of doing something or to be in the process of of doing a certain

action.

How to use être en train de

Here’s the format to follow when using être en train de to express an ongoing action.

The conjugated present form of ‘être’ + en train de + the infinitive form of the action that is about to happen
Some examples when used

 For first person singular — Je suis en train de parler. I am speaking (right now).

 For second person singular — Tu es en train de parler. You are speaking (right now).

 For third person singular — Il est en train de parler. He is speaking (right now).

 For first person plural — Nous sommes en train de parler. We are speaking (right now).

 For second person plural — Vous êtes en train de parler. You are speaking (right now).

 For third person plural — Ils sont en train de parler. They are speaking (right now).
Indicative--for stating facts

Indicative: what is happening, what happened, what will happen. Gives the facts.

Imperative--for stating commands

Past Perfect [what had happened before something else in the past]