French Verbs – 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:

FrenchEnglish
j’auraisI would have
tu auraisyou would have
il auraithe would have
elle auraitshe would have
nous aurionswe would have
vous auriezyou would have
ils auraientthey would have
elles auraientthey would have

Être, meanwhile, looks like this:

FrenchEnglish
je seraisI would be
tu seraisyou would be
il seraithe would be
elle seraitshe would be
nous serionswe would be
vous seriezyou would be
ils seraientthey would be
elles seraientthey 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 VerbConditional StemEnglish
acquériracquerr-to acquire
allerir-to go
avoiraur-to have
courircourr-to run
devoirdevr-to have to
envoyerenverr-to send
êtreser-to be
fairefer-to do
falloirfaudr-to need to
pleuvoirpleuvr-to rain
pouvoirpourr-to be able to
savoirsaur-to know
tenirtiendr-to hold
valoirvaudr-to be worth
venirviendr-to come
voirverr-to see
vouloirvoudr-to want

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

Quick Quiz – Written Recall

Can you fill in the blanks to complete the verbs we learned?

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