Level 59 - Perfect Tense (Le Passé Composé) Part 1

The perfect tense is the main past tense we use when we want to talk about what has happened in the past. The verb to have in French is avoir and in nearly all cases we start a sentence in the past tense with the bit of avoir that we need. Here is a reminder of the verb avoir:

The first part of the perfect tense is therefore the avoir bit. The second part of the perfect tense is called the past participle and is formed using the infinitive of the verb which describes what has happened.

To make the past participle for er verbs remove the er ending and add é (e.g. donner > donné)
(For more er verbs see Level 13.)

To make the past participle for re verbs remove the re ending and add u (e.g. vendre > vendu)
(For more re verbs see Level 14.)

To make the past participle for ir verbs remove the ir ending and add i (e.g. finir > fini)
(For more ir verbs see Level 15.)

Sample sentences

Some verbs have irregular past participles - see Level 60.

A small list of verbs use être 'to be' instead of avoir 'to have' to make the perfect tense - see Level 61.

When the present tense talks about the past

The present tense is normally used to express what is happening now - the current state of affairs. There are however two present tense constructions in French which refer to what has happened. The first is ça fait ... que where you say how long something has been happening. The second is the word depuis which means 'since' and is used to say since when something has been happening. The present tense is used because the situation is not completed but continues into the present. Here are some examples: