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Beginner Unit 25:
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Perfect tense with avoir - basic -er verbs

Key points

  • The perfect in French is made up of two verbs: an auxiliary, usually the present tense of the verb avoir, e.g. j'ai, tu as etc.
  • And a past participle. For -er verbs this is formed by removing the –er from the infinitive, and adding é: e.g. aimé

In English and in French you use a past tense when you wish to express something that happened in the past. As in English, in French there are different types of past tense. The most common is called the perfect tense.

The perfect is used to express something you’ve finished doing, the equivalent of I did or I have done in English:

grammar diagram

The perfect in French is made up of two verbs :

  • first is called the auxiliary and this is usually the present tense of the verb avoir: for example j'ai, tu as, and so on.
  • The second is called the past participle. For -er verbs this is formed by removing the –er from the infinitive , and adding é: for example, the past participle of the verb aimer (which means to like) is aimé.

    • grammar diagram

    Note

    The perfect in French has only one form, j'ai aimé. In English there are two forms, I liked and I have liked.

    Try not to get into the habit of always translating the perfect with have, just because French has the verb avoir as an auxiliary.

    Here's how aimer conjugates in full in the perfect tense:

    aimer to like
    j’ ai aimé
    tu as aimé
    il / elle a aimé
    nous avons aimé
    vous avez aimé
    ils / elles ont aimé

    J' ai travaillé pendant deux heures

    I worked for two hours

    Tu as aimé le film?

    Did you like the film?

    Il son parapluie

    He forgot his umbrella

    Nous à neuf heures

    We started at 9 o’clock

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    How French Works was written and coded by Chris Dawson.