Tenses and modes - What’s up with that?

French verbs are rarely used in their infinitive form - to be, to have… They are conjugated according to the subject in the sentence, often a pronoun - I, it, they, the cats… - the mode - indicative, conditional - and the tense - present, past, future.

In most French grammar, you’ll notice that French verbs are separated into 3 groups. That helps a bit in terms of conjugation pattern.

What are the French subject pronouns?

A subject is a person, an animal or a thing who is doing the action in the sentence. Often, they are used as a pronoun.

What is a mode anyway?

A mode (or mood) tells us about the point of view of the speaker. There are six modes.

And what’s a tense?

There are three tenses which are pretty straight forward. Present, past and future.

What group is my French verb in ?

A group is a way to categorize French verbs. There are 3 verb groups in French.

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This course on French verbs is a work in progress – it’s on sale now (the course will remain yours even when the sale price expires) and let me know what you think, what you’d like to see here in the course to make progress in French.

Difficulty: Any level