Grammar · Verbs & tenses
The passé composé — telling what happened
Use this to talk about a single event or action in the past that is finished: something that happened yesterday, last week, last year, or at a specific moment. It's the everyday past tense for telling a story or reporting what you did.
| parlerto speak | finirto finish | prendreto take | |
|---|---|---|---|
| je (j') | ai parlé | ai fini | ai pris |
| tu | as parlé | as fini | as pris |
| il / elle / on | a parlé | a fini | a pris |
| nous | avons parlé | avons fini | avons pris |
| vous | avez parlé | avez fini | avez pris |
| ils / elles | ont parlé | ont fini | ont pris |
- ai pris — irregular participle — not prendé.
- il / elle / on — with avoir, the participle never changes — same parlé whether the subject is il, elle, or elles.
- Most French verbs — including avoir itself (j'ai eu) and être (j'ai été) — take avoir. Only ~14 verbs of movement/change of place (and their compounds) take être: aller/venir, arriver/partir, entrer/sortir, monter/descendre/tomber, naître/mourir, rester, passer, retourner.
- With avoir, the participle stays constant — only the auxiliary changes with the person. With être (next board), the participle agrees with the subject.
- one French tense covers several English ones: j'ai mangé can mean I ate, I have eaten, or I did eat
- English never uses "to be" as the past auxiliary — I am gone is not how you say je suis allé
- almost every verb takes avoir — only a short, learnable list of movement verbs takes être, and those alone agree with the subject
j'ai allé → je suis allé ✓ (aller is a movement verb, so it takes être, not avoir)
Group the irregular participles by sound, not by verb. -u : vu, bu, lu, pu, voulu, su, connu · -is : pris, mis, appris, compris · -it : dit, écrit · plus three isolated ones worth memorizing on their own: fait, été, eu.
The agreement only happens with être. With avoir, the participle never changes for the subject (elle a mangé, not mangée) — accord is a signal that a verb belongs to the être group, not a general passé composé rule.
A separate card covers passé composé vs. imparfait. This card is for one finished event; the imparfait card is for background description and habits in the past — they work together in a story, not against each other.