Perfect Tense – Irregular Participles

Introduction to French Verbs and Tenses Perfect Tense – Irregular Participles

In this lesson we cover the list of irregular past participles.

What are the irregular past participles in French?

As we saw in the previous lesson, some verbs have irregular past participles, which means they don’t follow the rules that we described.

These therefore have to be learned individually.

The most common are as follows:

French Infinitive	Past Participle	English
acquérir	acquis	to acquire
apprendre	appris	to learn
atteindre	atteint	to reach
avoir	eu	to have
boire	bu	to drink
comprendre	compris	to understand
conduire	conduit	to drive
connaître	connu	to know
construire	construit	to construct
courir	couru	to run
couvrir	couvert	to cover
craindre	craint	to fear
croire	cru	to believe
décevoir	déçu	to disappoint
découvrir	découvert	to discover
devoir	dû	to have to
dire	dit	to say
écrire	écrit	to write
être	été	to be
faire	fait	to do, to make
instruire	instruit	to instruct
joindre	joint	to join
lire	lu	to read
mettre	mis	to put
mourir *	mort	to die
naître *	né	to be born
offrir	offert	to offer
ouvrir	ouvert	to open
paraître	paru	to appear
peindre	peint	to paint
pouvoir	pu	to be able to
prendre	pris	to take
produire	produit	to produce
recevoir	reçu	to receive
savoir	su	to know
souffrir	souffert	to suffer
suivre	suivi	to follow
tenir	tenu	to hold
venir *	venu	to come
vivre	vécu	to live

Those marked with an asterisk use être in the formation of the perfect tense.

Lesson Content

French Perfect Irregular Past Participles