French Grammar

Alphabet

Numbers

Articles

Adjectives

Adverbs

Verbs

Present Tense

Past Tense

Future Tense

Imperfect

Imperative

Nouns

Pronouns

Conjunction

Negation

Subjunctive

Conditional

Comparative

Prepositions

Vocabulary & Writing

French Vocabulary

Food Terms

Basic Phrases

French Expressions

Write a French Letter (new)

French Test (.pdf)

The present tense is used to just like English to express what happens in the present time. The present tense is regularly formed by dropping the ending of the infinitive and adding a personal ending to the stem: the stem of the verb (to speak/ parler) is (parl) now that we have the stem/ root of the verb, we will add the endings to it, since to speak/ parler belongs to the (-er) verbs we need to add the endings accordingly. The appropriate endings would be : je -e, tu -es, il -e, nous -ons, vous -ez, ils -ent :

The appropriate endings for the second category (-ir) are: je -is, tu -is, il -it, nous -issons, vous -issez, ils -issent. Let’s take (to finish/ finir) the stem is fin:

The appropriate endings for the 3rd category (-re ending) are: je -s, tu -s, il -, nous -ons, vous -ez, ils -ent. For example the stem for (to lose/ perdre)
is perd:

The forth categories is about verbs changing their stem while keeping the same regular endings that the first category (-er) has, for example the stem of the verb (to know/savoir) will be (sai) in the singular and (sav) in the plural, plus the regular endings:  je -s, tu -s, il -t, nous -ons, vous -ez, ils -ent.

This kind of verbs needs to be memorized or at least memorize their stem.

The 5^th group contains the kind of verbs that have irregular stems and irregular endings, for example the verb (to come/ venir) ends in (-ir) but doesn’t take the endings of the (-ir) categories, venir takes the following endings instead: je -s, tu -s, il -t, nous -ons, vous -ez, ils -ent. Also its stem is not simply (ven) but (vien) in the singular, (ven) in the plural, and add an extra (n) in the third person plural.

The last category contains the toughest verbs and should be memorized by heart; it appears that they’re used a lot, so it may come handy if you memorize them.