Conditional Mood – Irregular Verbs

In this lesson we learn how to create conditional mood for irregular French verbs.

What are the irregular verbs in the conditional mood?

A handful of verbs have irregular stems for the conditional. These are the same as those used for the future tense.

For example, the conditional mood endings for avoir are added to the stem aur-. For être the stem to use is ser-. Again, just like the future tense, the same endings are added as per the regular verbs, it’s just the stem that needs to be noted.

Therefore, avoir is formed as follows:

French	English
j’aurais	I would have
tu aurais	you would have
il aurait	he would have
elle aurait	she would have
nous aurions	we would have
vous auriez	you would have
ils auraient	they would have
elles auraient	they would have

Être, meanwhile, looks like this:

French	English
je serais	I would be
tu serais	you would be
il serait	he would be
elle serait	she would be
nous serions	we would be
vous seriez	you would be
ils seraient	they would be
elles seraient	they would be

What are the irregular conditional mood stems in French?

These are the same as those used for the future tense. The main irregular stems to note are:

French Verb	Conditional Stem	English
acquérir	acquerr-	to acquire
aller	ir-	to go
avoir	aur-	to have
courir	courr-	to run
devoir	devr-	to have to
envoyer	enverr-	to send
être	ser-	to be
faire	fer-	to do
falloir	faudr-	to need to
pleuvoir	pleuvr-	to rain
pouvoir	pourr-	to be able to
savoir	saur-	to know
tenir	tiendr-	to hold
valoir	vaudr-	to be worth
venir	viendr-	to come
voir	verr-	to see
vouloir	voudr-	to want

Vouloir, for example, which is used to express phrases such as ‘I would like,’ is conjugated as follows: