Introduction to Verbs in French

What is a verb?

While nouns are words to name things (such as ‘the cat,’ ‘the dog,’ or ‘the table’), verbs enable us to associate actions or states to those things. This is why they are also often called ‘doing-words.’ For example, in the phrases, “The cat sleeps,” “The dog barks,” and, “The table stands in the hallway,” ‘sleeps,’ ‘barks‘ and ‘stands‘ are all verbs.

As you can see, a noun doesn’t have to be doing much in order for it to be associated with an action. You could equally say, “The table is in the hallway,” and the word ‘is‘ is a verb that expresses the mere existence of something as the action!

What is the infinitive?

The infinitive is the neutral form of a verb, which in English is made up of two words, such as ‘to have,’ ‘to be,’ ‘to play,’ ‘to run,’ or ‘to sleep’. In other words, it is the form of a verb that is not tied to someone or something “doing” the action.

In French, only one word is used for the infinitive and this word ends in either -ir, –re or –er. “To have” is simply ‘avoir’ and “to be” is ‘être.’

Similarly, “to eat” is ‘manger,’ “to sell” is ‘vendre’ and “to sleep” is ‘dormir.’ It is the infinitive form of a verb that is used in the dictionary.

‘Avoir’ and ‘être’ are examples of irregular verbs, while ‘manger,’ ‘vendre’ and ‘dormir’ are regular verbs.

What is a verb stem?

The part of a word that relays its actual meaning is called the stem. In the case of verbs, therefore, the stem is derived by removing any additional endings that are conveying other information. For regular verbs in French, removing the -er, -ir or -re from the infinitive form will often provide the stem, as illustrated below:

Infinitve	Stem
jouer	jou
attendre	attend
finir	fin

What do regular and irregular verb mean?

In French, as in English, many verbs follow a specific pattern when they are used in practice. For example, “to shop,” in English becomes “I shop,” in the first person, or “she shops,” with an ‘-s’ in the third person. Adding an ‘-s’ in this case is a predictable pattern.

French verbs also follow distinct patterns, although the patterns vary slightly depending on the verb ending.

However, some verbs are unpredictable. For example, in English, “to be” does not become “she bes.” It becomes “she is.” This is not predictable, and there are numerous French verbs which also behave unpredictably. These are called irregular verbs and have to be learned by heart.

To achieve proficiency in a foreign language, a solid command of verbs and verb forms is vital, which is why students spend time learning verb patterns, technically known as conjugations.

What do we mean by ‘person?’

If you are telling a story from your own perspective and you are talking about yourself, then this is called a first person narrative. You would use ‘I’ in the narrative, such as “I awoke early.” Even more specifically, this is the first person singular. If you are including yourself and one or more other people in your narrative, you use ‘we,’ so, for example, “We awoke early.” This is the first person plural.

The second person, meanwhile, refers to those who are being addressed from the speaker’s perspective and is represented by the word ‘you.’ Again, this could be one person (second person singular) or multiple people (second person plural). In English, you could think of the plural ‘you’ as meaning ‘you lot.’

If the person, animal or thing being referred to is outside of this speaker-addressee relationship at this time, then we use the third person, represented by ‘he,’ ‘she,’ or ‘it,’ in the third person singular, or ‘they,’ in the third person plural.

	Singular	Plural
1st Person	je I	nous we
2nd Person	tu you	vous you
3rd Person	il / elle he / she / it	ils / elles they

Words like ‘I,’ ‘you,’ ‘it’ and ‘we’ are all called pronouns. In grammar books, verbs are often organized with their pronouns and laid out in a way similar to this table.

What do we mean by tense and mood?

Different languages have different tenses and moods that can be reflected in verbs, as well as person.

We have seen here how verbs change their form according to person, but they will also change their form depending on when the action that they are referring to takes place, either in the present, the past or the future.

Added to that, a mood in terms of verbs can relate to whether something is a statement of fact, or a statement of conjecture or supposition.

And, of course, we can express different moods in different tenses for different persons!

When starting out, language courses start with the present tense. For example, ‘I eat,’ ‘I am eating’ or ‘I do eat’ are all referred to as present tense, as they all relate to something that is currently happening. ‘I ate,’ on the other hand, is in the past, and ‘I will eat’ is in the future.

The good news for learning French is that the present tense forms found in English (‘I eat,’ ‘I am eating’ or ‘I do eat’) are all the same in French. In this case, Je mange covers them all!