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24. French Tenses TBC
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24. French Tenses TBC

When speaking everyday French, there are four tenses that are most commonly used to express the past, the present and the future. There are other tenses of course but they are used far less often in verbal communication and are generally reserved for the written form such as in letters, correspondence, books etc. 

We will begin with the past and work our way forward as we have already looked at the present to some degree already.  

Passe Compose 

We use two main tenses to express the past. They are called the passé compose and the imparfait (imperfect). When we use the passé compose we compose two verbs together to express the past, or the passé. We do the same thing in English so we will take a look at some examples from the Big Six. 

English: The verbs HAVE and DO can be combined or composed together to express the past; 

I have done.

French: The verbs AVOIR (HAVE) and FAIRE (DO) can also be composed together to express the past;

J’ai fay      I have done.  

English: The verbs HAVE and SAY can be composed together to express the past; 

I have said. 

French: The verbs AVOIR (HAVE) and DIRE (SAY/TELL) can be composed to express the past; 

J’ai dee       I have said.  

Je l’ai dis mille fois déjà     zhe lay dee mil fwu day-zhu    I have said it 1000 times already.  

Mille – 1000, fois – times, déjà – already 

Je l’ai dis de le faire avant demain    zhe lay dee de le fair u-vo’ de-mar  I (have) told him to do it before tomorrow. 

In this sentence we are using words from the essential vocabulary file; 

Avant - Before 

and 

Demain – Tomorrow.  

This is what was meant by learning our nouns, adjectives etc. by default as we work with our verbs.  

Pourquoi tu as fait ca?                    pour-kwu tu u fay su              Why have you one that? (Why did you do that?) 

Regarde comment elle a fait ca    regard co-mo el u fay su        Look how she has done that.

L’Imparfait – The Imperfect

The other most common way of expressing the past is to use l’imparfait (the imperfect). Whereas using the passé compose does require a little bit of thought at first, the imparfait is dead easy. Firstly, we will take another look at the way our ER verbs are pronounced at the end. The ER is pronounced as AY. To express an action in the past using the imparfait we use this AY sound on the end of the root of our conjugated verb.  

For example; 

Je faisais                                     zhe fay-zay           I did 

Je le faisais avant de partir     zhe le fay-zay u-vo de partir     I did it before (I) left/departed (or, I did it before leaving). 

How did you arrive at a phonetic pronunciation of ‘fay-zay’ with a word spelt f-a-i-s-a-i-s? I hear you ask. There are 2 steps;  

Step 1: The letter ‘s’ between two vowels (i and a) is pronounced with a ‘z’ sound in the same way that we pronounce the ‘s’ in the English word EASY.  

Step 2: We have exceptions in English such as the words that end in o-u-g-h like tough, thorough and Gough. There are even more ‘exceptions’ like these in French where the phonetic pronunciation does not match the way the word is written. It all becomes easier with practice once the patterns, particularly with verb conjugation, are recognised. 

Il connectait tous les ordinateurs au reseau     Il connect-ay too lez or-din-u-ter or re-zoe 

He connected all the computers to the network.  

See a pattern emerging again? To express the past using the imparfait we have taken the root of the verb CONNECTER, lopped the ER off the end again and added a-i-s or a-i-t. Either way, in the past tense, we pronounce the verb CONNECT-AY. 

Je lui donnais ma voiture     zhe loo-ee don-ay ma vwar-tur        I gave him my car             (Lui - Him)

Tu me donnais les clefs?      tchoo me don-ay lay clee                   You gave me the keys? – (in this case, using intonation to signify a question) 

A simple trick to remember how to speak in the past tense using the imparfait, just pretend you’re in New Zealand and add ‘AY’ onto the end of everything you say.  

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MANGER – EAT 

(l’imparfait) 

Je mangeais        zhe mon’zhay           I ate 

Tu mangeais        tchoo mon’zhay      You ate 

Il/Elle mangeait    il/el mo’-zhay          He/She ate 

On mangeait        o mo'-zhay              We ate 

.

MARCHER – WALK (l’imparfait) 

Je marcheais         zhe mar-shay            I walked 

Tu marcheais        tchoo mar-shay        You walked 

Il/Elle marcheait    il/el mar-shay           He/She walked 

On marcheait        o’ mar-shay               We walked 

Examples; 

Q. Pourquoi tu marcheais la-bas?       Why did you walk over there? 

A. Pour prendre de l’air.                        To take (get) some air. 

On marcheait dans les montagnes en Espagne    on’ mar-shay do’ lay mon-tarn’y on e-sparn’y 

We walked/hiked in the mountains in Spain.

Il parlait souvent d’un ami d’enfance Il par-lay soo-von’ dun u-mee do’-fons 

He often spoke of a childhood friend.

.

For MANGER and MARCHER we have not covered;

Nous (We/Us, formal written)

Vous (You plural/polite) 

Ils/Elles (They – masculine and feminine). 

At this point we need to focus on the patterns and realise the simplicity of conjugating verbs in their different tenses.

Futur Simple 

Le future simple est l’equivalent of expressing the future tense en anglais using the word ‘will’; 

I will do something, She will do something. 

In the same way that we express the past using l’imparfait by changing the end of le verbe, we express le futur by changing the end of the verb. Par example, si je veux dire (if I want to say) ‘I will change something’ I would say: 

Je changerais quelque chose    zhe sho-zheray kel-ke shoyz 

Quelque – Some       Chose – Thing

Remember the soft pronunciation of CH in French.  

Je fermerai         zhe fairm-eray      I will close 

Tu fermeras       tu fairm-eru          You will close 

Il/Elle fermera    il/el fairm-eru      He/She will close

On fermera        o’ fairm-eru          We will close 

Tu fermeras la porte avant de partir?  tu fairm-eru lu port u-von’ de partir?   You will close the door before leaving?

With ‘tu’, ‘il/elle’ and ‘on’, phonetically, on termine le verbe the same way every time pour exprimer le futur, as if we were using the English word WILL. 

e-r-a and e-r-a-s are pronounced the same way as the ‘s’ is silent on the end of tu fermeras. 

E-r-a-i is pronounced ‘e-ray’ in Je fermerai.

DORMIR - To Sleep

Je dormirai            zhe dor-mi-ray        I will sleep 

Tu dormiras          tchoo dor-mi-ru      You will sleep 

Il/Elle dormira       il/el dor-mi-ru         He/She will sleep 

On dormira           o’ dor-mi-ru             We will sleep 

Examples; 

Je dormirai dans la petite chambre ce soir    zhe dor-mi-ray do’ lu p’teet shomb say swar

I will sleep in the small room tonight. 

.

Tu dormiras dans la grande chambre ce soir et dans la petite chambre demain soir

tchoo dor-mi-ru don’ lu grond shomb se swar e do’ lu p’teet shomb de-mar swar

You will sleep in the big (bed)room tonight and in the small room tomorrow night.

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Using le verbe ALLER pour exprimer le futur (to express the future).

We have seen already how le verbe ALLER (Go) peut etre utiliser (can be used) to describe what will happen in the future. This is used in the same way on utilise le verbe GO en anglais.  

Je vais le faire zhe vay le fair I am going to do it

Tu vas le faire tu var le faire You are going to do it. 

Il/Elle va le faire il/el var le faire He/She is going to do it.

.

Pourquoi on va le faire après demain?  pour-kwu on’ var le fair u-pray de-mar? 

Why are we going to do it after tomorrow (the day after tomorrow)? 

Pourquoi pas le faire tout de suite ? pour-kwu par le fair toot sweet? 

Why not do it right now/immediately?

Comment tu vas aller a Sydney sans voiture? como tu var u-lay u Sydney so’ vwartur? 

How are you going to go to Sydney without (a) car?

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You may have noticed by now that we do not conjugate le seconde verbe dans une phrase when speaking in the future tense. Ex. Je vais aller – I am going to go. 

We have already conjugated le verbe ALLER the first time with JE VAIS. Le deuxieme fois (the second time) on utilise le verbe, it remains in its infinitive form, ALLER. 

This is also the case quand on utilise l’imparfait. We conjugate le verbe une fois, et après, le verbe qui suit* reste dans son forme infinitive. 

*qui suit – kee swee – who/that follows 

Example;

J’allais lire les rapports avant de quitter le bureau

zha-lay leer lay ru-por u-von’ de kit-ay le bureau 

I was going to read the reports before leaving the office.  

NB. In English we have the word ‘sentence’, and the word ‘phrase’ to describe a fragment of a sentence, whereas the poor deprived snail eaters only have the word ‘phrase’ in their vocabulary. Whenever the word ‘phrase’ is used in this text it is in the French context meaning either ‘phrase’ or ‘sentence’.

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