French

Conjugate Verbs

Introduction

French is a Romance language. It's a descendant of the Latin of the Roman Empire. Its development was also influenced by the native Celtic languages of Roman Gaul and by the Germanic language of the post-Roman Frankish invaders.

It is an official language in 29 countries, most of which form what is called in French La Francophonie, the community of French-speaking nations. It is an official language of all United Nations agencies and a large number of international organisations.

French verb conjugation

Verb

French verbs are conjugated by isolating the stem of the verb and adding an ending. In the first and second conjugation classes, the stem is easily identifiable from the infinitive, and remains essentially constant throughout the paradigm. For example, the stem of parler ("speak") is parl- and the stem of finir ("finish") is fin-. In the third group, the relationship between the infinitive form and the stem is less transparent, and several distinct stems are needed to produce all the forms in the paradigm. For example, the verb boire ("drink") has the stems boi-, boiv-, bu-, and buv-.

Phonetic conjugation: chanter [ʃɑ̃te]

Phonetic conjugation of French verbs is easier than written conjugation; present singular of all verbs (with a only a few exceptions) has the same form.

Present
	Written	Phonetic (IPA)
Sg.1	chante	ʃɑ̃t
Sg.2	chantes
Sg.3	chante
Pl.1	chantons	ʃɑ̃tɔ̃
Pl.2	chantez	ʃɑ̃te
Pl.3	chantent	ʃɑ̃t

Verblists

• French: Verbs with Irregular Past Participle
• French: Verbs with Both Regular and Irregular Past Participle
• French - Breton Dictionary
• French - Bulgarian Dictionary
• French - German, Standard Dictionary
• French - Greek Dictionary
• French - English Dictionary
• French - Finnish Dictionary
• French - Italian Dictionary
• French - Japanese Dictionary
• French - Latin Dictionary
• French - Dutch Dictionary
• French - Polish Dictionary
• French - Portuguese Dictionary
• French - Russian Dictionary
• French - Spanish Dictionary
• French - Swedish Dictionary
• French - Turkish Dictionary

Texts

• La porte des rêves

Paralleltexts

• The Three Musketeers
• La case de l'oncle Tom
• The War of the Worlds
• La Chanson de Roland
• The Master and Margarita
• Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Notes

• French notes

References

• Bescherelle 1. La conjugaison. Librairie Hatier. Paris, 1990.
• Bescherelle 2. L'orthographe pour tous. Librairie Hatier. Paris, 1990.
• Bescherelle 3. La grammaire pour tous. Librairie Hatier. Paris, 1990.
• Conjugaison. Librairie Larousse.
• Conjugaison. Editions Nathan. Paris, 1995.
• Dubois et al. Dictionaire étymologique et historique de français. Larousse.
• Caput, J. et J.-P. Dictionnaire des verbes français. Librairie Larousse. Paris, 1969.
• Gerhard Boysen. Fransk Grammatik. Munksgaards språgserie. Aalborg, 1992.
• French verb tables. Harper Collins Publishers. Glasgow, 1995.
• Anglade, Joseph. Grammaire Élémentaire de l'ancien Français. Librairie Armand Colin. Paris, 1918.
• Le Grand Robert, Dictionnaire de la Langue Française. Dictionnaires Le Robert. Paris, 1985.
• Simond, Ami. Les verbes français conjugués sans abréviations. Librairie Payot. Lausanne, 1993.
• Sohlberg, Anna-Liisa – Tella, Seppo. Lyhyt ranskan kielioppi. Kustannusosakeyhtiö Otava. Keuruu, 1993.
• Grevisse, Maurice – Goosse, André. Nouvelle grammaire française. Éditions Duculot, Paris-Gembloux. Belgique, 1980.
• Faral, Ed. Petite grammaire de l'ancien français. Librairie Hachette.