Verb Tenses

[Mai Phuong]

I am so confused about verb tenses in French (Both the form and the meaning and use).
Is there any way to relate them to English verb tenses? Like Plus-que parfait is Past perfect?
Merci bcp.

A false beginner

[Frank]

Hello,

Don't panic. Verb tenses sound scary in a lot of second languages. But the more you speak, the less you have to think about them in order to use the right ones.

The French language has a lot of tenses. But only a fraction is actually used:

- présent
- imparfait
- passé composé
- plus que parfait
- futur
- conditionnel
- passé simple (almost never used in real speech, but you will stumble upon it in books, articles, etc).
- subjonctif présent
- subjonctif passé

There are tons of exceptions, but as a rule of thumb :

- présent : je suis = I am
- imparfait : j'étais = I was
- passé composé : j'ai été = I have been
- plus que parfait : j'avais été = I had been
- futur : je serai = I will be
- conditionnel : je serais = I would be

The passé simple is also a past tense. It's used for short actions.
"Il pria" means that he prayed but it's something he did on the spur of the moment and for a little while.
"Il priait" means that he used to pray. Or he prayed for a longer time.

The "subjonctif" is an horrible tense with no direct English equivalent. Neil has written some insightful explanations about that beast. I'm also going to post some notes about it.

Also, while not strictly a tense, you should be aware of expressions like "être en train de". This one is the way to translate English continuous tenses, as in "je suis en train de manger" (I'm eating), "j'étais en train de manger" (I was eating) and "je serais en train de manger" (I'll be eating).

[Mai Phuong]

Thanks Frank for your prompt reply. I hadn't expected it to be that quick!
I found your answers very useful and informative.
I'm trying to brush up on my grammar so that I can reply you in French!
Merci beaucoup!

MP

[Neil Coffey]

There's no great harm in learning some general correspondences between French verb forms and English constructions, provided you look out for the exceptions. But I would suggest trying to read about-- and notice-- some of the precise ways in which the different forms are used.

Some information on the site about the most common forms:
- present tense, roughly equivalent of "I play", "I am playing", "I have been playing"
- the perfect tense, roughly equivalent of "I played", "I have played"
- the imperfect tense, rough equivalent of "I was playing", "I used to play" (where you focus on the "middle" of an action, not its end points)
- the future tense, rough equivalent of "I'll play", "I'll be playing"
- the conditional tense, rough equivalent of "I'd play" (as in either future-in-the-past or hypothetical action)

When you've learnt about these forms and how they're used, then look at some other "compound" forms that are commonly made by combing some of the above tenses with the so-called past participle, giving the pluperfect ("I had played"), future-perfect ("I'll have played") and conditional perfect ("I'd have played").

As you go along, you'll need to learn about the subjunctive, special forms roughly the equivalent of English forms such as "him playing", "for him to play", "for him to have played" (where the verb isn't actually conjugated as such in English).

To read certain types of French narrative, you need to have passive knowledge of the "past historic" ("passé simple" in French) and related tenses. The past historic is essentially a special narrative tense that expresses actions occurring in a sequence. It practically never occurs in speech (though there are one or two forms you should learn as they occur in oral news reports). But by learning just a handful of these forms plus the present and perfect tenses, you'll be able to read a large number of newspaper articles, for example.

Another strategy to bear in mind is that certain common irregular verbs tend in practice to occur most often in certain tenses, so to get you started with reading, you can "prime" yourself by learning these common verb forms (see the page on common French verb forms).

[Mai Phuong]

Chèr Neil,
Merci beaucoup de votre réponse.
L'explications sont faciles de suivre.
I'll print them out as my French language companion.
I still have to try my best to speak and write in French.
:)
MP