Past Tense

[Kebab]

The passe composse of the French verbs is really easy. All you need is a Subject and the verb Avoir and congigate it and add another verb.

Example: J'ai danse

Verbs that end with:
ER - Change to E(accent aygoo)
Example: Danse(accent aygoo)

IR - I
Example: Grossi

RE - U
Example: Vendu

Exceptions:
Etre - Ete
Avoir - Eu
Faire - Fait
Vouloir - Voulou
Pouvoir - Pu
Devoir - Du
Venir, Revenir, Devenir - Venu, Revenu, Devenu
Prendre - Pris
Aller - Alle

Example: J'ai pris



Note: French speaking people/with the accents on their keyboards are free to change it please!

[CFHollister]

The passe composse of the French verbs is really easy. All you need is a Subject and the verb Avoir and congigate it and add another verb.

I've noticed this in other people's posts, so I'm not trying to pick on you.
Please give these gramatical terms in English when in an English sentence (and parenthetically give them in French)... and vice versa if the sentence is in French. I know a bit about grammar (since I'm construting my own language) and find these little mini-lesson helpful in understanding French. But when the subject of the lesson is given in a language I don't understand yet, it makes it very hard to follow. For example here, I gathered that we are talking about the past tense, but I have no idea what aspect "composse" translates as and therefore I still wouldn't know exactly when to use these congugations.

As an asside, many European languages congugate verbs for both tense and aspect simultaneously but these tense/aspect combination congugations are often ironiously just refered to as "tenses."

[HibyPrime]

Note: French speaking people/with the accents on their keyboards are free to change it please!

Lets NOT have that discussion again..

Thanks for the mini-lesson!

[Twitch]

I suck at grammar but verb tense translate like this:
(Yes I used a book because I do not know all of the the tenses off hand, and no this is not all of them)

les temps de l'Indicatif = Indicative Mood
les temps de l'Imperatif = Imperative Mood
les temps du Subjonctif = Subjunctive Mood

les temps Simple = The Simple Tenses
le Présent = The Present
l'Imparfait = The Imperfect
le Passé = The Past
le Futur = The Future
Le Conditionnel = Conditional Mood

Les temps Composés = The Compound Tenses
le Passé Indéfini = The Past Indefinte
le Plus-que-Parfait = The Pluperfect
le Passé Antérior = The Past Anterior
le Futur Antérior = The Future Perfect
Le Conditionnel Antérior = The Conditional Perfect

le Participe = The Participle

So in this case Indicatif Passé Composé would be the Indicative Compound Past. And anybody who is good at grammar please feel free to improve and better organize that list.

[CFHollister]

Thanks, Twitch. That helps considerably. The only term which is unfamiliar to me is "anterior." Based on the other translations of "le futur anterior" and "le conditionnel anterior" that it might be "past perfect."

[aFrenchie]

Lets NOT have that discussion again..
Not the keyboard discussion again indeed :D but all accents ARE IMPORTANT and it's a serious error in French if you forget them! So you'd better find your own solution to use them on your keyboard as soon as possible before you take very bad habits by forgetting them... Use "keyboard" or "azerty" in the Search tool in this forum, you should find tons of them :D

Correction:

Example: J'ai dansé

Verbs that end with:
ER - Change to E(accent aygoo) aygoo??? aigu in French (feminine=aiguë, don't ask about the ë, I don't know :))
Example: Dansé(accent aygoo)

IR - I
Example: Grossi

RE - U
Example: Vendu

Exceptions:
Être - Été
Avoir - Eu
Faire - Fait
Vouloir - Voulu (not voulou)
Pouvoir - Pu
Devoir - Dû
Venir, Revenir, Devenir - Venu, Revenu, Devenu
Prendre - Pris
Aller - Allé

Example: J'ai pris

[Kebab]

:S Je regrete

[Twitch]

The only term which is unfamiliar to me is "anterior." Based on the other translations of "le futur anterior" and "le conditionnel anterior" that it might be "past perfect."
I know less grammatical terms in English than in French, I had stricter French teachers when in came to grammar, but the book I used is actually an English book describing French grammar and that is how they translated them. Perfect in French would be Parfait, so it was actually the other two that made less sense to me. But the Passé Antérior is very rare in French, and I don't think there is an English equivalent so they just translated the French into English.

Noun
past anterior
A compound tense used in literary French (French: passé antérieur), in function a pluperfect, and in form composed of the conjunction of the simple past tense of an auxiliary verb (avoir, être) with the past participle.
But a more useful description exists on About.com Passé antérieur - French Past Anterior (http://french.about.com/library/weekly/aa091600.htm)

[Gardemoncoeur]

I suggest teaching MRS RD VANDERTRAMP if you know what I mean. xD I mean you have the "exceptions" yes but I found that MRS RD VANDERTRAMP helped more to know when not to use avoir.
accent aygoo = é the pointing up. =]

[fsquared]

I had no idea what you meant, but I guess it's a mnemonic for which verbs don't use avoir.

http://learnfrench.elanguageschool.net/mod/resource/view.php?id=149

I suppose there is (or at least was) an analogue in English, e.g., "Christ is risen" (rather than "has").

[garçoncanadien]

thats right fsquared :)