Apprendre peu, déduire tout : le système verbal en cinq formes

Unité GR-61 · campagne 25 · l'infinitif, le participe, l'auxiliaire, je / nous / ils — et le reste se déduit.

A French verb has more than fifty written forms, and nobody learns them one by one. You learn five things per verb and build every tense from them with one set of endings per tense. This page is the method; the pages it relies on explain each step in detail — the three stems (GR-44), the stem bridges (GR-45), the futur (GR-49), the families (P50.verb-systems.23) and the spelling changes (P50.verb-systems.21).

The five things to learn per verb

For a regular -er verb you need even less: the infinitive gives all of it (parler, parlé, avoir, je parle, nous parlons, ils parlent).

Everything else is deduced

The endings are the same for every verb, whatever its family. Two rules of thumb carry the system: one stem, one set of endings; and the auxiliary carries the tense of a compound form.

The short list that breaks the rules

Learn these as whole units — they are also the most frequent verbs:

By ear, and in writing

The spoken and the written systems do not overlap exactly, so learn each on its own terms.

By ear, many endings sound the same:

• je finissais, tu finissais, il finissait, ils finissaient are all [finisɛ];
• je parle, tu parles, il parle, ils parlent are all [paʁl].

What the ear uses instead:

• the [ʁ] of the futur: je parle / je parlerai;
• the [ɛ] of the imparfait: je parle / je parlais;
• the nous / vous endings, which are always heard: -ons, -ez, -ions, -iez;
• the stem change in the plural: il prend / ils prennent.

In writing, the person decides the silent letters:

• -s for tu;
• -t or -d for il outside -er;
• -ent for ils, never heard.

The one pair the ear barely separates is je parlerai (futur) / je parlerais (conditionnel). It is decided by the meaning: a condition or politeness → -ais.

The errors this method prevents

If your first language is Russian

Russian learns a verb by its infinitive and two présent forms — писать: пишу, пишет — for the same reason: the rest follows. Add the French participle and auxiliary to that habit, and the nous form, which carries the imparfait.

Minimal pairs. One change between the two sentences, and what it does:

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