| next

The verb aimer in the present tense

Key points

Verbs have different endings in French.
We use the present tense when we want to talk about what we’re doing now.
To form the present tense of most -er verbs, take off the -er and add -e, -es, -e, -ons, -ez, -ent.

A verb is a type of word like give or eat that tells you to what someone or something is doing. It's sometimes called a "doing word".

Now verbs can have different endings – it depends on whether you use them with I, you, he, she and so on. For example, in English we say I give but he gives.

The same is true in French. The simplest form of the verb is called the infinitive (this is the equivalent of to give, to like and so on) and this is used on its own. But to create the I, you, he form and so on the endings have to change. This is called conjugating a verb.

Compared to English, conjugating in French is quite complicated. This is because there are a lot of different endings. The most common types of verb in French have an infinitive ending in –er.

If you want to conjugate an –er verb, you remove the infinitive ending to form the stem (like aim- for aimer). You then add the endings like –e, -ons and –ez to the stem to form the je, tu forms etc.

The verb aimer which means to like is an –er verb and it conjugates like this:

aimer to like
j’	aime
tu	aimes
il / elle	aime
nous	aimons
vous	aimez
ils / elles	aiment

Note

An important thing to remember with French verbs is that you do not normally pronounce the endings –s and –ent: tu aimes , nous aimons , ils aiment .

In the above table you can see the forms for what we call the present tense. We use this when we want to talk about what we’re doing now, rather than what we did yesterday or will do tomorrow.

If you've ever seen a London Underground map you could think of it like this:

grammar diagram