visit in french conjugation

How to Conjugate "Visiter" (to Visit) in French

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The French verb  visiter  means "to visit," and it's a relatively easy word to remember because it resembles its English counterpart. When you want to use it in the present, past, or future tenses, you will need to conjugate it. 

How to Conjugate Visiter ​

If you have studied many French verbs, you've likely come across a number that are  regular - er verbs  as this is a very common conjugation pattern.  Visiter  falls into this category, so you can apply the same endings you learned for similar verbs to this one.

The first step in any verb conjugation is identifying the verb stem. In this case, that is  visit- . As you work through the conjugations, various endings will be added to indicate which tense the verb is used in.

The indicative verb mood is used most often in French. You will use it for the basic conjugations of  visiter  in the present, future, and imperfect (past) tenses. All you need to do is study the chart and find the correct form that matches both the subject pronoun and the tense. For instance, "I am visiting" is  je visite  and "we will visit" is  nous visiterons .

Visiter  and the Present Participle

When you add the ending - ant to the stem of visiter you form the present participle . The result is the word visitant . It can become an adjective, gerund, or noun as well as a verb depending on the context of the sentence.

Visiter  in the Past Tense

Another common way to form the past tense of visiter is to use the passé composé . This requires a simple construction using the auxiliary verb avoir and the past participle visité . For example, "I visited" is j'ai visité and "we visited" is nous avons visité.

More Conjugations of  Visiter

There are a few other conjugations of  visiter  that you may encounter as your French fluency increases. For instance, the subjunctive verb mood is used when the action of visiting is uncertain. Similarly, the conditional verb mood is used when the action is dependent on something else occurring.

It is likely that you'll only find the  passé simple and imperfect subjunctive forms in French writing. However, it's good to be able to at least recognize them.

When you want to use  visiter  in short sentences, the  imperative verb mood can be used. For this, you do not have to include the subject pronoun. Instead of  tu visite , you can use  visite .

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visiter : Conjugation

The visiter conjugation tables below show how to form the French verb visiter according to tense and person. To listen to the pronunciation of a given tense of visiter , click on the loudspeaker icon at the bottom of the table. See the notes on the conjugation of visiter at the end of this page.

This verb follows the so-called regular -er verb pattern, the pattern followed by vast majority of verbs of the language, and by practically all new verbs entering the language.

The regular -er pattern has the following defining features:

1. Outside the regular -er paradigm, only aller , être and naître have past participles ending in -é . 2. Many other verb patterns, except verbs of the finir type plus a few other patterns, have an irregular vowel change, e.g. boire > je b oi s vs nous b u vons . See the grammar section on irregular verb patterns in French for a list of the different vowel changes.

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Verb Table for visiter

All conjugation types.

• Conjugation with avoir (Currently shown)
• Reflexive (conjugation with être)

Indicatif  •  Subjonctif  •  Conditionnel  •  Impératif  •  Formes impersonnelles

Passé simple, futur simple, passé composé, plus-que-parfait, passé antérieur, futur antérieur, participe présent, participe passé, browse the conjugations (verb tables), look up "visiter" in other languages, links to further information.

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• Conjugation visiter
• Exercise visiter

Conjugation French verb visiter

Translation visiter, indicatif (indicative), présent (present), passé composé (present perfect), imparfait (imperfect), plus-que-parfait (pluperfect), passé simple (simple past), passé antérieur (past perfect), futur simple (future), futur antérieur (past future), conditionnel (conditional), passé (perfect), subjonctif (subjunctive), passé (past), impératif (imperative), infinitif (infinitive), participe (participle), gérondif (gerund), synonyms for the verb visiter.

Conjugation of the French verb visiter

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Verb conjugation of "visiter" in French

How do You Say “I Visited my Grandma” in French?

If you answered with the verb “visiter,” you are wrong. This is part of my top 10 most common vocabulary mistakes , so read up to learn the true meaning and uses of the verb “visiter” in French.

1 – Visiter in French = To Take A (Guided) Tour

In French, the verb “visiter” means to take a (guided) tour. You do that to a museum, or a house, but that’s about it.

• À Paris, j’ai visité le Louvre . In Paris, I visited the Louvre.
• Marie m’a fait visiter sa nouvelle maison. Marie gave me a tour of her new house.

2 – Une Visite = a Visit / a Tour

Following the same logic, the noun “une visite” can mean the exact same thing as in English, “a visit”, but also “a tour” as in when visiting a place…

• La visite guidée du Louvre était très intéressante – the guided tour of the Louvre was very interesting.
• Je suis allée chez ma grand-mère pour une visite surprise – I went to my grandma for a surprise visit.

3 – Don’t Use Visiter + Part of France

To say “I visited Paris”, “I visited France”… as in you went there, well, we use the verb “aller” (“to go”). Not “visiter”, because it would imply you took a tour and saw everything. So it’s possible to use “visiter” + a tiny city that you actually toured with a guide, but not with a whole city. Well, it’s not so much that it is not possible, just that we don’t speak like that! We’d use aller.

• Je suis allée à Paris – I visited/ went to Paris
• À Paris, nous avons acheté un guide et nous avons visité les monuments historiques . – In Paris, we bought a guidebook and we toured the historical monuments.

4 – Visit + Person in French

Now, an even bigger problem, since this is so much used in English.

How would you say “I visited my friend,” or “my friend visited me?” in French?

Well, it’s not “visiter”. At least, not any longer. I’ve seen “l’ange Gabriel visita Marie” in the Bible… but we don’t use it in modern French.

This sounds particularly bad in French since “ visiter ” really brings up an exploration image… When a student tells me “J ‘ai visité ma grand-mère ” I have a flash of “Fantastic Voyage” where Raquel Welch and her team were shrunk to explore a patient’s body…

5 – Use Aller Voir + People to Say to Visit + People in French

So what do we use to say “to visit someone” in French?

Same answer as above: “aller” (or “venir” if the person is coming to you)

• Je suis allée (voir or chez) mon amie – I visited my friend.
• Mon amie est venue ( me voir or chez moi ) – My friend visited me. You’d use “chez” here if the visit happens at your/your friend’s house.

6 – To Pay a Visit = Rendre Visite à Quelqu’un

Now, I can hear you saying: “What about rendre visite à quelqu’un ? “ And you are right, this is an expression we use from time to time. We use it as often as an English speaker would use “pay a visit to someone”.

My experience shows, however, that this expression doesn’t work for most students. Basically, the idea of “visiter + people” kind of stays in their head, and they soon forget the correct expression and revert to saying “J’ ai visité mon amie ” (which is a mistake).

So to say “I visited someone” in French, your grandmother for example, say  “J e suis allée voir ma grand-mère ” or “J e suis allée chez ma grand-mère “.

7 – How Do You Say “Come and Visit” in French?

This is a common expression in English, that doesn’t really have an equivalent in French however… Here, the notion of “visit” in English is not the one of taking a tour, but rather “visit us”, spend time with us, maybe it’s an invitation to sleep over : come see us, and you can stay with us (you don’t have to go to a hotel) kind of idea.

In France, we don’t have any expression like that. You cannot say: “venez et visitez”, that would make no sense at all in French. You could say “venez nous rendre visite” = “come pay us a visit”, that would be the closest translation.

I would probably say : “venez et restez chez nous quelques temps” : “come over and stay at our place for some time”.

In French, as in any language, there are many expressions such as this one that you cannot translate literally. The best is to learn the language in the context of a level appropriate story, so that you really get a feel for the expression and when to use them.

Furthermore, learning in a story makes you remember the words longer, since your brain remembers the story. I strongly suggest you check out my downloadable French audiobooks for all levels, available exclusively on French Today.

I post new articles every week, so make sure you subscribe to the French Today newsletter – or follow me on  Facebook , Twitter  and  Pinterest .

Camille Chevalier-Karfis

Born and raised in Paris, I have been teaching today's French to adults for 25+ years in the US and France. Based on my students' goals and needs, I've created unique downloadable French audiobooks focussing on French like it's spoken today, for all levels. Come to Paimpol and enjoy an exclusive French immersion homestay with me in Brittany .

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Visiter vs Rendre Visite – To Visit in French

By: Author David Issokson

Posted on Published: January 1, 2024  - Last updated: January 22, 2024

The purpose of today’s lesson is to dispel some confusion over how to say “to visit” in French. Here’s the rule: The verb visiter is used for visiting places and rendre visite à is used for visiting people. For example, je visite Paris (I visit Paris) and je rends visite à mon ami (I visit my friend). This rule is set in stone and is a common mistake among students. Let’s jump right into the lesson!

visiter, rendre visite à

Visiter vs. Rendre Visite

Visiter – to visit a place.

Let’s start with visiter , which is specificially used for visiting places. Visiter is a regular ER verb, which means that its endings are the same as all other regular ER verbs when conjugated in the present tense. Here’s the present tense conjugation:

Je visite I visit Tu visites You visit Il, elle, on visite He, she one visits Nous visitons We visit Vous visitez You visit Ils, elles visitent They visit

In our first example, you’ll see that the definite article les (the preceding plural noun) precedes les Etats-Unis (the United States) . The rule for visiter is: visiter + definite article + country. For cities, the rule is visiter + city name.

Marie visite les États-Unis.

Marie visits the United States.

Je visite la France. Je visite Paris.

I visit France. I visit Paris.

Rendre visite

Our second verb for “to visit” is rendre visite . This is specifically used for visiting people. The grammatical construction is as followed: Rendre visite à + person.

Je rends visite à à I visit Tu rends visite à à You visit Il, elle, on rend visite à He, she, one visits Nous rendons visite à We visit Vous rendez visite à You visit Ils, elles rendent visite à They visit

This verb must be followed by the preposition à (meaning to or at) . Hence, what you’re really saying is “to render a visit to + person”. An Englsih equivalant is “to pay somebody a visit”.

For this construction, the verb rendre gets conjugated and visite is like a non moving part that does not get conjugated. Rendre is a regular RE verb.

Here are some example sentences using rendre visite .

Ils vont rendre visite à leurs beaux-parents demain .

They’re going to visit their in-laws tomorrow.

Pierre rend visite à ses copains en Suisse.

Pierre is visiting his friends in Switzerland.

Et voilà ! You know know how to say “to visit” in French and are clear on visiter vs. rendre visite . Now check out our lesson covering bosser (slang verb for to work) .

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David Issokson is a lifelong language enthusiast. His head is swimming with words and sounds as he speaks over six languages. Of all the languages he speaks, he's the most passionate about French! David has helped hundreds of students to improve their French in his private online lessons. When procrastinating working on FrenchLearner, David enjoys his time skiing and hiking in Teton Valley, Idaho.

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French conjugation: A detailed how-to guide

Conjugating verbs in a variety of tenses is one of the most fundamental skills for properly speaking a language. With French conjugation, we can go a long way with just knowing a few tenses, despite the fact that the language boasts sixteen (!) of them.

Fortunately, French conjugation follows some straightforward rules which apply to all of the tenses.

In this post we’ll cover all the basics of French conjugation to get you started recognizing how to conjugate verbs in French.

This article is brought to you by LingoCulture, Where you can get unlimited private French classes via Zoom with native teachers for a flat monthly rate. It’s the closest thing to immersion you can get without living in a French-speaking country. Click here to learn more.

It’s a pretty in-depth post, broken down into a number of distinct sections. Feel free to scroll through down to the section you need, or click straight through from this outline:

What is conjugation? Other verb forms The infinitive The participle French verb tenses, explained How to conjugate verbs in French Conjugation tables: regular verbs Conjugation tables: être, avoir, and aller Conjugation: compound tenses Conclusion

Now let’s dive in and learn all the basics of French verb conjugation!

What is conjugation?

Before we get into the nuts and bolts of French conjugation, let’s first take a step back so we’re clear on what we mean by conjugation in the first place. This explanation applies as much to French verbs as it does to English verbs.

You can definitely skip this section  if you’re already clear on the concept of verb conjugation! We’ll be introducing several grammatical terms here which we’ll refer to throughout the rest of the post.

When we consider conjugation , we’re referring to the process of changing a verb’s form so that it corresponds with the subject  and the tense . The subject  is the grammatical person  carrying out the verb’s action, while the tense  reflects the specific time and mood  intended by the speaker.

In both English and French, the subject can be one of six grammatical persons : first-, second-, and third-person, in both singular and plural. To show what we mean by these, let’s look at this conjugation table of the English verb to be , conjugated in the present tense:

In addition to conjugating verbs to match the grammatical person, we also conjugate them to a specific tense. A verb tense  indicates when  an action happens, while also placing that action within a mood . By when , tenses indicate timeframes ranging from past  to present  to future . By mood , tenses give the verbs’ actions different measures of certainty .

We’ll leave it at that for now as far as responding to the question of what is conjugation. We’ll go into more detail on tenses in the next section.

What French verb tenses are there?

There are 16 distinct verb tenses in French  that have specific conjugations, as well as several other verb forms  that aren’t technically considered conjugations.

Don’t worry! You can get by just fine using just a handful of French tenses, and in reality most French speakers only use around half of them in everyday speech. Several tenses are only really used in literature, so you’ll never even encounter them in spoken French!

This post isn’t intended as an in-depth treatise on all the verb tenses in French, so we’re not going to dive into too much detail on each one here. Nonetheless, we’ll at least provide a list of French verb tenses  broken down into the four moods : indicative (stating facts), conditional (often in “if” and “would” phrases), subjunctive (theoretical), and imperative (commands). We’ll also cover the other verb forms  that aren’t considered conjugations.

Note that we generally refer to the French tenses and verb forms by their French names. Even though many tenses are similar between languages, it can sometimes be misleading when we try to refer to tenses with translated terms.

Other French verb forms

Before listing the tenses, we should introduce the other verb forms , especially since a couple of these are elements of the compound conjugations in the tenses we’ll list below. These forms aren’t technically conjugations, since they don’t change with respect to a given subject.

The infinitive  is the unconjugated form  of a verb that you’ll find in a dictionary. The infinitive is sometimes used as-is, or else we start with the infinitive and then conjugate the verb to another tense. It’s also an integral part of an easy way to talk about the future , using aller + infinitif . Here are some examples of the infinitif  form:

The participle is an essential form of a verb that can’t stand on its own, but that’s used as an integral part of numerous compound tenses. We’ll see the participle appear in two of the three next verb forms, along with half of the sixteen conjugated tenses!

This verb form exists in both French and English. Here are the French participles  for the same example verbs:

Infinitif passé

The previous form we saw above is the standard infinitive, whereas in French we also acknowledge a past infinitive  form that incorporates the past participle. Here are some examples of the French infinitif passé  form:

Participe présent

In French, this verb form is equivalent to what in English is known as the gerund, though they’re not used in all the same ways in both languages. Check out the French participe présent  forms of several common verbs here, followed by a few example sentences.

• Étant en retard, nous avons décidé de prendre un taxi. – Being late, we decided to take a taxi.
• Ayant quatre jeunes enfants, elle n’est jamais seule. – Having  four young children, she’s never alone.
• Aimant  son chein, elle lui a acheté plusiers cadeaux de noel. – Loving  her puppy, she bought him several Christmas gifts.

Participe passé

The participe passé is a compound verb form with two parts. It’s composed of the participe présent of either avoir or être that we saw above, followed by the participle of the verb in question that we saw just after the infinitive form above.

All the French verb tenses

Now that we’ve seen the individual verb forms that French verbs can take, and before we get into the basics of conjugation, let’s just see a list of the French verb tenses . We’ll break these down by mood, and then explain which tenses within each mood are used in everyday French.

The indicative mood  is used to talk about facts. The indicative is the most common mood used in spoken French and English.

These first four indicative tenses are by far the most common tenses in the French language. The first is the present tense, the next two are past tenses, while the fourth is a future tense. The passé composé is a compound tense built on the participle, while the other three each have unique conjugations:

• Passé composé
• Futur simple

These next two indicative tenses are sometimes used by native French speakers, but they’re less common. They’re both compound conjugations built on the participle:

• Plus-que-parfait
• Futur antérieur

The last two indicative tenses are really only used in literature. You’re only likely to hear them spoken during religious services or theatrical performances. The passé simple has its unique conjugations, while the passé antérieur is built on the participle:

• Passé simple
• Passé antérieur

Conditionnel

The conditional mood is used to talk about potential possibilities. It’s also used to add a level of politeness. There’s some debate among grammarians on whether le conditionnel is a distinct mood or whether these tenses fall under l’indicatif, but since conjugation tables generally treat the conditional separately we’ll consider it as its own mood.

French conditional conjugations translated into English often contain the words could  or would .

There are two French conditional tenses, one for the present and one for the past. Both are fairly common in spoken French. The present conditional tense has its own conjugations, while past conditional tense is built on the participle:

• Présent conditionnel
• Passé conditionnel

The subjunctive mood  is used to evoke uncertainty. The subjunctive is actually very common in French, often being triggered by phrases like il faut que  that are always followed by subjunctive conjugations.

The French present subjunctive tense is used all the time, and has its own conjugations. The past subjunctive is less common, but still used sometimes by native speakers. It’s built on the participle:

• Présent subjonctif
• Passé subjunctif

The other two subjunctive tenses are really relics of historic literature. You’re unlikely to ever hear either of them:

• Imparfait subjonctif
• Plus-que-parfait subjonctif

The final mood is the imperative , which is used to give commands. Imperative conjugations only exist for the singular and plural forms of you in French, as well as for the first-person plural (which you would translate into English with “let’s go” or “let’s finish”).

The only imperative tense that’s really used in French is the present, which has its own conjugations. Nonetheless, an imperative past tense exists on full French conjugation tables.

• Présent impératif
• Passé impératif

How to conjugate verbs in French

Whew, that was a lot of introduction to reach this point where we finally talk about French conjugation!

Now that we’ve seen all the different French verb tenses, as well as the other forms that French verbs can take outside of strict conjugations, we’re ready to really dissect the basics of how to conjugate verbs in French .

French conjugation is actually fairly straightforward for most verbs, since it really just comes down to identifying the verb stem  and adding the right endings . Things get a bit more complicated when we deal with irregular verbs because of some stem changes, but overall, all the tenses are fairly consistent with their respective endings.

In short, for the tenses with unique conjugations, we can sum this up with two simple rules :

1. Start with the verb stem

2. Add the endings

What do we mean by stems and endings? Let’s take a look at each of these two aspects of French verb conjugation in turn.

Note that these rules only apply to the simple tenses that have their own unique conjugations. For compound tenses, we start with one of the simple tenses and just add the participle. In other words, there are really just eight different sets of unique conjugations .

French conjugation: Get the stem

As the basis for all the simple conjugations in French, we start with the verb stem . For regular verbs, we get the stem by simply chopping off the last two letters of the infinitive. It’s that simple!

Even for most irregular verbs this formula for getting the stem is pretty similar, though some have different stems that just need to be learned.

Note that we didn’t include the verb stem as one of the other verb forms outlined above since it never exists independently of the verb endings. We’ll demonstrate this with the regular verbs  from our previous examples:

French conjugation: Add the endings

With regular verbs, all we need to do to conjugate our verbs is to add the right endings to the stem !

Each of the eight simple tenses has a specific set of endings for the six grammatical persons, so we just apply the ending depending on the subject. The exact endings differ a bit for the three main families of regular verbs, but they’re still pretty recognizable for each of the different tenses.

Let’s see this in action in the simple present indicative tense  for the three groups of regular verbs: -er , -ir , and -re verbs. Note that although some of the endings are indeed different between the three groups, they still generally resemble each other across the tense.

Présent indicatif conjugation table

Regular french verb conjugation: simple tenses.

You’re now familiar with the fundamental rule for French verb conjugations: identify the stem  from the infinitive, and add the endings corresponding to the subject and verb tense. With the three groups of regular French verbs, this formula is the same for all eight of the simple tenses.

We already saw the present indicative tense conjugations in the last section. In this section we’ll provide similar conjugation tables for the other seven simple tenses.

Imparfait indicatif conjugation table

Along with the passé composé, the imparfait  tense is one of the two French past tenses used on a regular basis in everyday speech. The endings are all consistent between the three regular verb groups, with just the usual -iss- in the middle of the -ir verb conjugations.

Passé simple conjugation table

The passé simple  isn’t really used in spoken French, though it remains common in literature.

Futur simple conjugation table

We’ve continued to show the same stems for the futur simple  that we established for all three of our regular verb groups. For this tense, however, it’s common to consider the infinitive to be the stem for -er and -ir verbs, while for -re verbs the stem is obtained by just dropping the -e. This approach doesn’t change the conjugations we’ve presented there, it just makes for shorter endings to memorize!

Présent conditionnel conjugation table

The first- and third-person singular conjugations of the présent conditionnel  tense sound the identical to their counterparts in the futur simple, so even native speakers often get these two tenses confused.  Like the futur simple, the stem can also essentially be considered to be the infinitive. The defining feature across nearly all of these conjugations is the -i- immediately after the infinitive stem.

Présent subjonctif conjugation table

The présent subjonctif  tense is very common in spoken and written French. Many of these conjugations sound identical to their counterparts in the présent indicatif or the imparfait, so it takes some practice to know that the subjonctif is indeed being invoked in many spoken contexts.

Imparfait subjonctif conjugation table

The imparfait subjonctif  is essentially only seen in historic texts. Many native speakers have only a vague grasp of this tense. We only include it here for completeness.

Présent impératif conjugation table

The présent impératif  tense is the standard French command form, so there are no conjugations for the third-person nor for the first-person singular. The regular verb conjugations all sound identical to the present indicatif, and only the tu conjugation of the -er verbs has a small spelling difference since it drops the -s.

Irregular verb conjugations: Simple tenses

So far, this post on French verb conjugation has focused primarily on regular verbs. The building blocks of conjugation we’ve covered so far nonetheless still generally apply to irregular verbs! Most of the tenses and their conjugations should still be recognizable  with most irregular verbs, since most only take minor changes to the regular rules we’ve seen.

We’re not going to go into further detail on irregular French verb conjugation in this post. That said, we’ll still include the simple conjugation tables for what are arguably the three most important verbs in the French language: être , avoir , and aller .

Être, Avoir, and Aller conjugations: Simple tenses

Knowing how to conjugate être, avoir, and aller is fundamental in learning French, so we find it pertinent to include these three verbs in our post on conjugation. While these three are among the most-irregular French verbs in many tenses, their conjugations should still demonstrate that the regular endings we saw above are still similar a lot of the time.

Être , meaning to be  in French, is often the first verb French learners learn. Être  is the auxiliary verb used in compound tenses of reflexive verbs, as well as of verbs of movement . We have a dedicated post on être conjugation , as well as another on expressing possession using être .

Avoir , meaning to have in French, is the auxiliary verb  used in compound tenses for most French verbs, just like to have in English. Avoir forms the basis for many idiomatic phrases, many of which we introduce in our post on avoir expressions . Since avoir is such an important verb in French, we give it special attention in our posts on avoir conjugation ,  avoir meanings , and expressing obligation using avoir à .

Aller , meaning to go in French, is the auxiliary verb used to create an easy future form, le futur proche . Following the formula aller + infinitif , the equivalent in English is going to + infinitive . We go into more detail on this verb in our post on aller conjugation .

Since être and avoir are the auxiliary verbs for the compound tenses , we’ll indicate which compound tense is built using their conjugations in each of the simple tenses we list here.

Now let’s see the eight simple tense conjugations for être, avoir, and aller ! Note that, since they’re quite irregular and therefore not transferrable to other verbs, we’re not providing the stem and endings as we did in the regular verb conjugation tables above.

Présent indicatif conjugations: être, avoir, and aller

The passé composé tense  is constructed using these présent indicatif conjugations of être and avoir, followed by the participe.

Imparfait indicatif conjugations: être, avoir, and aller

The plus-que-parfait tense  is constructed using these imparfait indicatif conjugations of être and avoir, followed by the participe.

Passé simple conjugations: être, avoir, and aller

The passé antérieur tense  is constructed using these passé simple conjugations of être and avoir, followed by the participe.

Futur simple conjugations: être, avoir, and aller

The futur antérieur tense  is constructed using these futur simple conjugations of être and avoir, followed by the participe.

Présent conditionnel conjugations: être, avoir, and aller

The passé conditionnel tense  is constructed using these présent conditionnel conjugations of être and avoir, followed by the participe.

Présent subjonctif conjugations: être, avoir, and aller

The passé subjonctif tense  is constructed using these présent subjonctif conjugations of être and avoir, followed by the participe.

Imparfait subjonctif conjugations: être, avoir, and aller

The plus-que-parfait subjonctif tense  is constructed using these imparfait subjonctif conjugations of être and avoir, followed by the participe.

Impératif conjugations: être, avoir, and aller

*Note that, to ease the pronunciation, this imperatif tu form changes spelling to vas  when it’s used in the common expression vas-y , meaning go ahead . Check out our dedicated post for a full explanation of allons-y and other ways to say “let’s go” in French .

The passé impératif tense  is constructed using these présent impératif conjugations of être and avoir, followed by the participe.

French verb conjugation: Compound tenses

We’re almost done with this detailed introduction to French conjugation! Conjugating the compound tenses is actually very straightforward since they’re all just combinations of what we’ve already seen.

Every single compound tense has two parts: a conjugated auxiliary verb  (either être or avoir), followed by the participle  of the verb we’re conjugating. You have this same construction in English compound tenses, with examples like “he has been,” “I had been,” or “you would have been.” “Been” is the participle here, while “to have” is the auxiliary verb.

Whereas to have  is the only auxiliary verb in English compound tenses, avoir  is one of two auxiliary verbs in French, albeit the most common. Être  is the French auxiliary verb used with reflexive verbs , and with most verbs of motion .

The participle , or participe  in French, is always the same regardless of the rest of the conjugation, as we saw early in the post when we introduced the other verb forms. However, when the compound conjugation uses être  as the auxiliary verb, the participle’s ending is modified to match the gender and number of the subject (by adding -e, -s, and -es for feminine, plural, and feminine plural). We’ll see this in the passé composé conjugation table below.

Compound tense conjugations

Rather than repeat the same format we used with the simple tenses, we can distill the compound tenses down to their component parts: the tense of the auxiliary verb + the participle .

To conjugate verbs in each compound tense, we just need to use the conjugations of the auxiliary verb in the corresponding tense, and then add the participle. Follow this chart to build conjugations for each tense. We provide a sample in the next section with the passé composé.

Passé composé conjugation

To demonstrate the formula for compound conjugations we laid out above, we’ll show the passé composé conjugations  for two of the verbs we’ve already seen: finir  and aller . Finir  takes avoir  as an auxiliary verb, while since aller  is a verb of motion its auxiliary verb is être . For reference, we also include their participles at the top of the table.

To form the passé composé conjugations , we use the présent indicatif conjugations of the auxiliary verb  and then add the participle :

Note that when using être as an auxiliary verb , the participle always ends with -s in the plural conjugations. When the subject is feminine, the participle ends in -e, or -es for the plural subjects.

Conjugations for the other seven compound tenses  follow the same construction that we’ve just shown here with the passé composé .

Conclusion: French verb conjugation

This has been a pretty in-depth introduction  to the fundamental methods of verb conjugation in French . We’ve taken quite a trip through all the relevant aspects of verbs and their tenses, hopefully providing you with a solid foundation for applying these French conjugation rules  as you progress in the language.

We started off with a basic explanation of conjugation  itself, referencing its nuances in both English and French. We also noted that we usually refer to French verb tenses by their French names in order to keep them disctinct from their counterparts in other languages. With these framework details out of the way, we dove straight into the different French verb forms!

Before getting into strict conjugations by verb tense, we introduced the various verb forms  that don’t change between subjects or tenses. The two verb forms of particular relevance to the rest of the lesson are the infinitive , from which we draw our stems, and the participle , which appears in the eight French compound tenses.

Then came the main body of our post on French conjugation, which started with an overview of the sixteen French verb tenses . We saw that half of these are simple tenses with distinct conjugations, while the other half are compound tenses whose construction is based on the simple tenses with the participle. We also learned that several tenses are rarely even used in spoken French, with a couple even relegated to historic literature.

With the list of French tenses out of the way, we finally got into our lesson on how to go about conjugating French verbs for each tense . We showed that it all comes down to obtaining the stem , and adding the right endings . We then provided conjugation tables  for all eight simple tenses, demonstrating the regularity of these rules with all three groups of regular French verbs .

While we didn’t go deep into all the nuances of irregular verb conjugations , we saw that they generally follow the same rules as the regular verbs we’d just seen. We chose the three most-important French verbs as our irregular verb examples, providing full conjugation tables  in the eight simple tenses for être , avoir , and aller .

Our final section was on compound tense conjugations . We saw that these are built entirely on material we’d seen earlier, namely the simple tense conjugations of the auxiliary verbs être and avoir , along with the participle  we saw early on. We demonstrated this construction with a full conjugation table in the passé composé, while providing a clear formula for building each of the other compound tenses.

Overall, this post went pretty in-depth into all the rules for conjugating verbs in French . We organized it so that you can scroll quickly to the specific information you’re looking for, so it can continue to serve as a reliable reference as you improve your French language skills. We recommend bookmarking this post  to come back to it in the future, and sharing it with other French learners who might appreciate it.

Thanks for learning the fundamentals of French verb conjugation  with us!

KEEP READING

Quel definition: understanding all the forms of quel in french, lingoda vs lingoculture: a review of french language classes online, the alouette song: meaning and lyrics in french and english, ordinal numbers in french: a simple guide.

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Visiter vs Rendre visite à whether you visit a place or a person

In French, you use two different verbs to express visiting someone and visiting a place.

How to say to visit someone or a place in French

Look at these sentences:

J' ai visité Paris. I visited Paris.

Il a visité le Musée d'Orsay. He visited the Museum of Orsay.

J' ai rendu visite à ma soeur. I visited / went to see my sister.

Il rend visite à ses parents. He's paying a visit to his parents.

Note that the verb visiter  is used with places .  

When visiting people (friends, family...), we use the expression rendre visite à [quelqu'un]  and never visiter   alone. (This is similar to the English to pay a visit to [someone]. )

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Learn more about these related French grammar topics

• Pronom d'objet indirect
• Verbes réguliers avec -ER
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