Perfect tense

The perfect tense, called le passé composé in French, is the everyday past tense. You reach for it whenever you talk about one completed action that happened in the past.

It translates two English past forms at once:

• the simple past — I ate a sandwich;
• the present perfect — I have eaten a sandwich.

So a single French sentence, J'ai mangé un sandwich, covers both "I ate a sandwich" and "I have eaten a sandwich". You do not need to choose between them — context does that work.

Why "composé" (made up)? The name is a gift: composé means "made of more than one part". Every perfect-tense verb is built from two words:

1. an auxiliary (helper verb) — either avoir (to have) or être (to be) — in the present tense, and
2. a past participle — the part that carries the meaning (mangé = eaten, fini = finished, allé = gone).

So j'ai mangé literally reads "I have eaten", and je suis allé literally reads "I am gone" (= I went). English uses "have" the same way ("I have eaten"), which makes avoir feel natural; the être verbs need a little more practice.

Worked mini-example. Take "I watched television" → start with the subject je (I), add the auxiliary ai (have), add the past participle regardé (watched): J'ai regardé la télévision. Two parts, one tense.

The past participle is the second word in the perfect tense (the "-ed" part in English: walk → walked). For regular verbs there is a simple three-way rule based on the infinitive ending.

The regular rule.

Verb group	Example infinitive	Remove	Add	Past participle	English
-er	parler (to speak)	-er	-é	parlé	spoken
-ir	finir (to finish)	-ir	-i	fini	finished
-re	vendre (to sell)	-re	-u	vendu	sold

Notice the -er → -é participle sounds exactly like the infinitive (parler and parlé are both "par-LAY"). The accent aigu is what shows you it is the participle in writing — do not leave it off.

High-frequency irregular past participles. Many of the commonest verbs have irregular participles you simply learn by heart. These appear constantly, so memorise them now:

Infinitive	English	Past participle	Example
avoir	to have	eu (uh)	j'ai eu — I had
être	to be	été	j'ai été — I was/have been
faire	to do/make	fait	j'ai fait — I did/made
prendre	to take	pris	j'ai pris — I took
voir	to see	vu	j'ai vu — I saw
mettre	to put	mis	j'ai mis — I put
boire	to drink	bu	j'ai bu — I drank
lire	to read	lu	j'ai lu — I read
écrire	to write	écrit	j'ai écrit — I wrote
dire	to say	dit	j'ai dit — I said

Worked mini-example. "I took the bus" → infinitive prendre (irregular!) → participle pris → with j'ai: J'ai pris le bus. If you wrongly applied the -re → -u rule you'd get prendu, which does not exist — prendre is on the irregular list.

The majority of French verbs build the perfect tense with avoir (to have). You only need two things: the present tense of avoir, and the past participle.

The present tense of avoir (your auxiliary):

Person	avoir	+ participle	Example	English
je	ai	mangé	j'ai mangé	I ate
tu	as	mangé	tu as mangé	you ate
il / elle / on	a	mangé	il a mangé	he ate
nous	avons	mangé	nous avons mangé	we ate
vous	avez	mangé	vous avez mangé	you ate
ils / elles	ont	mangé	ils ont mangé	they ate

(Je ai becomes j'ai by elision — the e of je is dropped before the vowel.)

Putting a full sentence together is a three-step routine:

1. Choose the subject: nous (we).
2. Add the matching part of avoir: avons (have).
3. Add the past participle: fini (finished). → Nous avons fini nos devoirs. (We finished our homework.)

Crucially, with avoir the past participle does NOT change to match the subject. J'ai mangé, elle a mangé, ils ont mangé — the participle mangé stays exactly the same whether the subject is masculine, feminine, singular or plural. This makes avoir verbs the easy ones.

Worked mini-example. "They (f.) watched a film." Subject elles → avoir ont → participle regardé (from regarder, to watch) → Elles ont regardé un film. The participle is regardé, unchanged, even though elles is feminine plural — because the auxiliary is avoir, not être.

A small but very common group of verbs build the perfect tense with être (to be) instead of avoir. Most of them describe movement or a change of state (coming, going, arriving, leaving, being born, dying). All reflexive verbs also use être.

The present tense of être (your auxiliary): je suis, tu es, il/elle est, nous sommes, vous êtes, ils/elles sont.

The être verbs. A classic memory aid is MRS VANDERTRAMP, where each letter is a verb:

Verb	English	Past participle
Monter	to go up	monté
Rester	to stay	resté
Sortir	to go out	sorti
Venir	to come	venu
Aller	to go	allé
Naître	to be born	né
Descendre	to go down	descendu
Entrer	to enter	entré
Retourner	to return	retourné
Tomber	to fall	tombé
Rentrer	to come home	rentré
Arriver	to arrive	arrivé
Mourir	to die	mort
Partir	to leave	parti

(Their opposites pair up neatly: monter/descendre, entrer/sortir, arriver/partir, naître/mourir, aller/venir.)

Past-participle agreement with être — the big rule. When the auxiliary is être, the past participle behaves like an adjective and agrees with the subject in gender and number. You add the same endings you'd add to an adjective:

• masculine singular: no change — il est allé (he went)
• feminine singular: add -e — elle est allée (she went)
• masculine plural: add -s — ils sont allés (they went)
• feminine plural: add -es — elles sont allées (they went)

(These endings are usually silent, but you must write them.)

A note on "je" and "tu". Because je and tu can be male or female, you only add the feminine -e if the speaker/listener is female: a girl writes je suis allée; a boy writes je suis allé. That is why you often see allé(e) written with the optional -e in brackets.

Worked mini-example. "My sisters arrived late." Subject mes sœurs (feminine plural) → être sont → participle arrivé + -es for f.pl. → Mes sœurs sont arrivées en retard. Both -e (feminine) and -s (plural) are added: arrivées.

Reflexive verbs use être. Reflexive verbs (those with a reflexive pronoun like me, te, se — e.g. se laver = to wash oneself) always form the perfect tense with être, and the pronoun sits before the auxiliary. The participle agrees with the subject as usual.

Person	Reflexive perfect	English
je	je me suis levé(e)	I got up
tu	tu **t'**es levé(e)	you got up
il / elle	il s'est levé / elle s'est levée	he/she got up
nous	nous nous sommes levé(e)s	we got up
vous	vous vous êtes levé(e)(s)	you got up
ils / elles	ils se sont levés / elles se sont levées	they got up

So "I (a girl) got up early" = Je me suis levée tôt.

Making it negative — wrap ne … pas around the auxiliary only. The two parts ne and pas go around the helper verb, leaving the past participle outside:

• J'ai mangé → Je n'ai pas mangé. (I did not eat.)
• Elle est partie → Elle n'est pas partie. (She did not leave.)
• Je me suis levé → Je ne me suis pas levé. (I did not get up — the reflexive pronoun stays inside with the auxiliary.)

Other negatives work the same way: ne … jamais (never), ne … rien (nothing): Je n'ai jamais vu ce film (I have never seen this film).

Asking a question. The simplest spoken way is just intonation or est-ce que: Est-ce que tu as fini ? (Have you finished?). For a more formal written question you invert the auxiliary and the subject, joined by a hyphen: As-tu fini ? (Have you finished?), Es-tu allé au cinéma ? (Did you go to the cinema?). The participle stays at the end.

Worked mini-example. "He did not see the film." Start from il a vu le film (he saw the film), wrap ne … pas around the auxiliary a: → Il n'a pas vu le film. The participle vu stays put, outside the negative sandwich.

We said the avoir participle does not agree with the subject — and that is true. But there is one agreement rule with avoir that examiners like to test at the top end: agreement with a preceding direct object (often shortened to PDO).

The rule. With avoir, the past participle agrees (in gender and number) with the direct object only when that object comes before the verb. In normal word order the object comes after, so nothing happens:

• J'ai mangé les pommes. (I ate the apples.) — object les pommes is after the verb → no agreement (mangé stays fixed).

But the object can be moved in front of the verb in three common ways, and then the participle agrees:

1. A direct object pronoun (le, la, les) before the verb: Les pommes ? Je les ai mangées. (The apples? I ate them.) — les (= les pommes, f.pl.) comes before → add -es.
2. With que in a relative clause: La lettre que j'ai écrite. (The letter that I wrote.) — que stands for la lettre (f.s.) → add -e.
3. In a question with quel(le)(s): Quelle robe as-tu achetée ? (Which dress did you buy?) — quelle robe (f.s.) is before → add -e.

This is the only avoir agreement. If the object comes after the verb (the normal case), there is no agreement: J'ai acheté une robe.

Worked mini-example. "I saw her." → voir gives vu; "her" is the direct object pronoun la, placed before the auxiliary; la is feminine singular, so vu gains an -e: → Je l'ai vue. Compare J'ai vu Marie (I saw Marie — object after the verb, no agreement: vu).