What is a verb in French?

It's the word that expresses the action or state of a sentence, and in French it also encodes who is acting and when. Je parle, nous parlions, and vous parlerez are all the same verb, with the ending doing work that English handles with separate pronouns and auxiliaries.

How many verb groups does French have?

Three. The first is the -er verbs, which is by far the largest and takes all new verbs. The second is the regular -ir verbs with their -iss- plural. The third is everything else: the irregular -ir, -re, and -oir verbs, including most of the highest-frequency ones.

Do I have to learn every tense?

Not at once. The present, the passé composé, the imperfect, the near future, and the simple future will carry ordinary conversation. The conditional and the subjunctive come next, and the literary tenses like the passé simple only need to be recognised, not produced.

Why do French verbs have so many forms?

Because the ending marks the subject as well as the tense and mood. Six persons multiplied by a dozen or so tense-and-mood combinations gives a large table, though many of those forms are pronounced identically and several are essentially literary.

What's the difference between a simple and a compound tense?

A simple tense is one word (je parle, je parlais, je parlerai). A compound tense is an auxiliary plus a past participle (j'ai parlé, j'avais parlé, j'aurai parlé). Every compound tense in French uses avoir or être, so learning those two verbs unlocks all of them.

French grammar · Beginner

French Verbs Explained: Infinitives, Groups, Tenses, and What the Endings Do

Written by Camille Laurent, Lead French Curriculum Editor · Reviewed May 2026

A French verb is the word that says what happens, and it carries far more information than its English equivalent. Its ending tells you who is acting, when, and in what mood, which is why French verbs are listed by their infinitive and then rebuilt for every situation.

Elle travaille à Lyon, elle a travaillé à Nantes, et elle travaillera à Lille.

She works in Lyon, she has worked in Nantes, and she'll work in Lille.

What it is

In English a verb changes shape twice or three times: walk, walks, walked, walking. In French it changes shape dozens of times, because the ending carries the subject as well as the tense. That's the single biggest structural difference between the two languages, and everything else about French verbs follows from it.

travailler → je travaille, nous travaillions, vous travaillerez, qu'il travaille. — to work → I work, we used to work, you'll work, that he work.

How to spot it

A French verb in a dictionary is always in the infinitive, ending in -er, -ir, -re, or -oir. That form never appears with a subject; to use it in a sentence you have to rebuild it.

parler, finir, vendre, pouvoir — to speak, to finish, to sell, to be able
Je veux parler. — I want to speak. (the infinitive after another verb)
Je parle. — I speak. (the verb rebuilt for a subject)
Parler est facile. — Speaking is easy. (the infinitive as a noun)

French uses the infinitive where English often uses the -ing form: j'aime lire, I like reading.

Introduction to French Verbs Quick Reference

What a French verb tells you

Information	Where it lives	Example
Who is acting	the ending	parlons = nous
When	the stem and the ending	parlerai = future
Mood	the ending set	que je parle = subjunctive
Voice	an auxiliary	est écrit = passive
Aspect	the choice of past tense	je parlais against j'ai parlé
Politeness	often the conditional	je voudrais rather than je veux

Common Introduction to French Verbs Examples in French

The building blocks, one category at a time:

The Three Conjugation Groups

Je regarde le film.: I'm watching the film. (-er, the biggest group)
Nous finissons demain.: We finish tomorrow. (-ir, regular)
Il vend sa voiture.: He's selling his car. (-re, the smallest group)
Elles peuvent venir.: They can come. (-oir, all irregular)

Grammars usually name three groups. The -oir verbs are folded into the irregular third group along with most of the -re verbs.

Simple and Compound Tenses

Je mange.: I eat. (one word: simple)
J'ai mangé.: I ate. (two words: compound)
J'avais mangé.: I had eaten.
J'aurai mangé.: I'll have eaten.

Every compound tense is an auxiliary plus a past participle. Learn avoir and être and you can build all of them.

Verbs With and Without an Object

Je lis un roman.: I'm reading a novel. (transitive)
Je dors mal.: I sleep badly. (intransitive)
Je me lève tôt.: I get up early. (pronominal)
Il pleut depuis hier.: It's been raining since yesterday. (impersonal)

Pronominal verbs carry a pronoun that matches the subject, and they take être in the compound past.

Verbs That Need a Preposition

Je commence à comprendre.: I'm beginning to understand.
Nous essayons de finir ce soir.: We're trying to finish tonight.
Elle pense à son travail.: She's thinking about her work.
Ils parlent de leurs projets.: They're talking about their plans.

The preposition is part of the verb and has to be learned with it. Nothing about the meaning predicts whether it's à or de.

How French Verbs Are Put Together

Five ideas cover the whole system. None of them is difficult on its own; the work is in seeing how they combine.

The Infinitive Is the Name, Not a Usable Form

Parler is the label under which the verb is filed. It appears after another verb (je veux parler), after a preposition (sans parler), and as a subject (parler coûte cher), but never with a subject pronoun on its own.

Il faut partir maintenant.

We have to leave now.

Dictionary form, not sentence form.

The Ending Carries the Subject

In nous parlons the -ons already says nous. French keeps the pronoun anyway, because most endings have gone silent and the pronoun is what a listener actually hears. In writing, though, the ending is doing the real work.

Nous partons, vous restez.

We're leaving, you're staying.

Ending = person + number.

The Stem Carries the Tense

Compare parl-ais and parler-ais: the endings are identical and the stem decides that one is the imperfect and the other the conditional. Learning a tense means learning which stem it takes.

Je parlais lentement, je parlerais plus vite.

I used to speak slowly, I'd speak faster.

Stem = tense, ending = person.

Mood Is a Separate Dimension From Tense

French has an indicative for facts, a subjunctive for things filtered through doubt or emotion, a conditional for hypotheses, and an imperative for orders. Each mood has its own set of tenses, which is why conjugation tables are so large.

Je veux qu'il vienne.

I want him to come.

Indicative, subjunctive, conditional, imperative.

Compound Tenses Are Auxiliary Plus Participle

Once you can conjugate avoir and être in a tense, you can build the corresponding compound tense for any verb. J'ai fini, j'avais fini, j'aurai fini, j'aurais fini: the participle never moves.

Elle était déjà partie.

She had already left.

Conjugate the auxiliary, leave the participle alone.

Common Mistakes with Introduction to French Verbs

Incorrect: Je suis aller au marché. — I went to the market.

Correct: Je suis allé au marché. — I went to the market.

The compound past needs a participle, not an infinitive. Allé and aller sound identical, so the distinction exists only in writing, and it's the most persistent spelling error in French at every level.

Incorrect: Je suis parle français. — I speak French.

Correct: Je parle français. — I speak French.

French has no progressive form, so there's no auxiliary in the simple present. The ending alone carries both the person and the tense.

Incorrect: Il manque moi. — I miss him.

Correct: Il me manque. — I miss him.

Manquer reverses the roles: the person missed is the subject and the one doing the missing is an indirect object. Word-for-word translation from English inverts the meaning.

Incorrect: J'aime lisant. — I like reading.

Correct: J'aime lire. — I like reading.

Where English uses an -ing form after a verb, French uses the infinitive. The present participle lisant exists but is used for simultaneous action, as in en lisant, while reading.

One Verb, Across Tenses and Moods

The point of these two tables isn't to memorise them but to see the shape of the system: how few endings there really are, and how the same stem keeps reappearing.

Parler in four indicative tenses

Present, imperfect, future, and compound past. Notice that only the stem and the endings change; nothing else about the verb moves.

Pronoun	présent	imparfait	futur	passé composé
je / j'	parle	parlais	parlerai	ai parlé
tu	parles	parlais	parleras	as parlé
il / elle / on	parle	parlait	parlera	a parlé
nous	parlons	parlions	parlerons	avons parlé
vous	parlez	parliez	parlerez	avez parlé
ils / elles	parlent	parlaient	parleront	ont parlé

Three of these four tenses are one word long. Only the passé composé needs an auxiliary.

Parler in four moods

The indicative states, the subjunctive suspends, the conditional supposes, and the imperative orders. The imperative exists only for tu, nous, and vous, since you can't order yourself or a third party directly.

Pronoun	indicatif	subjonctif	conditionnel	impératif
je / j'	parle	que je parle	parlerais	—
tu	parles	que tu parles	parlerais	parle
il / elle / on	parle	qu'il parle	parlerait	—
nous	parlons	que nous parlions	parlerions	parlons
vous	parlez	que vous parliez	parleriez	parlez
ils / elles	parlent	qu'ils parlent	parleraient	—

For -er verbs the present subjunctive is spelled like the present indicative in four persons. Only nous and vous differ.

The two auxiliaries, which you'll reuse endlessly

Every compound tense in the language is built from these. Learn them in the present and the imperfect first, since those give you the passé composé and the pluperfect.

Pronoun	avoir (présent)	être (présent)	avoir (imparfait)	être (imparfait)
je / j'	ai	suis	avais	étais
tu	as	es	avais	étais
il / elle / on	a	est	avait	était
nous	avons	sommes	avions	étions
vous	avez	êtes	aviez	étiez
ils / elles	ont	sont	avaient	étaient

Être is the only French verb whose imperfect stem isn't taken from its nous form.

Verbs That Don't Behave Like Their English Translations

Some French verbs are perfectly regular but arrange their sentence differently. These are worth meeting early, because word-for-word translation goes wrong with them immediately.

Manquer and plaire reverse the roles

With manquer, the person who is missed is the subject. With plaire, the thing that pleases is the subject. English puts them the other way round, so the sentence has to be rebuilt rather than translated.

Tu me manques.: I miss you. (literally: you are missing to me)
Ce film me plaît.: I like this film. (literally: this film pleases me)
Mes amis me manquent.: I miss my friends.

Getting manquer backwards is the classic error, and it produces exactly the opposite meaning.

Impersonal verbs with no real subject

A few verbs exist only in the third person singular, with il as a placeholder that refers to nothing. Falloir, pleuvoir, neiger, and the expression il y a all work this way.

Il faut réserver à l'avance.: You have to book in advance.
Il pleut sans arrêt.: It's raining non-stop.
Il y a trois solutions.: There are three solutions.
Il vaut mieux attendre.: It's better to wait.

Il y a doesn't change for number: il y a une chaise, il y a dix chaises.

Pronominal verbs with no reflexive meaning

Many verbs carry a pronoun without meaning oneself at all. Se souvenir, s'agir, se rendre compte, and s'ennuyer are single lexical items in which the pronoun is simply part of the verb.

Je me souviens de son nom.: I remember his name.
Elle se rend compte du problème.: She realises the problem.
Nous nous ennuyons ici.: We're bored here.
Il s'agit d'une erreur.: It's a question of a mistake.

All of these take être in the compound past: je me suis souvenu, elle s'est rendu compte.

Introduction to French Verbs FAQs

What is a verb in French?: It's the word that expresses the action or state of a sentence, and in French it also encodes who is acting and when. Je parle, nous parlions, and vous parlerez are all the same verb, with the ending doing work that English handles with separate pronouns and auxiliaries.
How many verb groups does French have?: Three. The first is the -er verbs, which is by far the largest and takes all new verbs. The second is the regular -ir verbs with their -iss- plural. The third is everything else: the irregular -ir, -re, and -oir verbs, including most of the highest-frequency ones.
Do I have to learn every tense?: Not at once. The present, the passé composé, the imperfect, the near future, and the simple future will carry ordinary conversation. The conditional and the subjunctive come next, and the literary tenses like the passé simple only need to be recognised, not produced.
Why do French verbs have so many forms?: Because the ending marks the subject as well as the tense and mood. Six persons multiplied by a dozen or so tense-and-mood combinations gives a large table, though many of those forms are pronounced identically and several are essentially literary.
What's the difference between a simple and a compound tense?: A simple tense is one word (je parle, je parlais, je parlerai). A compound tense is an auxiliary plus a past participle (j'ai parlé, j'avais parlé, j'aurai parlé). Every compound tense in French uses avoir or être, so learning those two verbs unlocks all of them.