Le passé composé is one of the first verb tenses you'll study as a learner of French, and it's one of the more complex ones. In this video, I'll be going over when it's used and how to conjugate it, including verbs that use avoir, verbs that use être, irregular verbs, and reflexive verbs. So when is it used? Le passé composé is used when referring to complex verbs.
completed, one and done type actions of the past. For example, Elle a vendu sa voiture, meaning she sold her car. The reason it's called le passé composé is that it's composed of two parts, those being the auxiliary verb or helping verb, which will either be avoir or être conjugated in the present tense, and then your main verb in its past participle form.
So how exactly does one conjugate it? Well these tables here show the standard conjugation patterns of verbs ending in ER, verbs ending in IR, and verbs ending in RE. In other words, what these tables are saying is that for ER verbs, like parler, you chop off the ER, get your stem, and then add an E with an acute accent, or in French, an E accent aigu, and then you have your past participle. For IR verbs like choisir, you chop off the IR, get your stem, and then add an I. For RE verbs like vendre, which we saw earlier, you chop off the RE ending, get your stem, and then add a U.
If you know this pattern, you'll know how to conjugate most verbs in le passé composé. Unfortunately, there are still quite a few irregular past participles that play by their own rules. Here I listed some super common ones. So here we have the formula for forming le passé composé.
You take your subject, conjugate avoir or être in the present tense, then conjugate your main verb into its past participle. What you're probably asking yourself is how do I know when to use avoir and when to use être? The rule of thumb is to always use avoir unless the verb falls under the Dr. and Mrs. Vandertramp mnemonic shown here.
In this case, these verbs, in which a lot of them refer to movement or a change of setting, you use être as your auxiliary. It's important to note that sometimes some of these verbs are conjugated with avoir when a direct object is involved, like j'ai sorti mes devoirs, I took out my homework. But the vast majority of scenarios you'll be using these verbs with être. One thing you have to know with these Dr. and Mrs. Vander Tramp verbs is that you have to make sure the past participle agrees in gender and number with the subject.
So for Elle est allée au cinéma, you add the e because it's a female subject doing the action. For Ils sont allés, you add the s because it's a group of males or a group of males and females doing the action. And for elles sont allées, you add the es because it's a group of females doing the action. Moving on, reflexive verbs always use être as their auxiliary.
Now you might be asking, what the heck is a reflexive verb? Reflexive verbs are verbs where the subject is performing the action on themselves. In other words, the action is being reflected back onto the subject. These are identified with ce in front of the verb, like se brosser les dents.
brushing one's own teeth, se raser, shaving oneself, or se laver les mains, washing one's own hands. Unlike standard verbs, before conjugating reflexive verbs into le passé composé, you have to add the right reflexive pronoun. In other words, me for je, te for tu, se for il, elle, on, nous for nous, vous for vous, and se for il, elle, on.
plural. The formula for conjugating reflexive verbs in le passé composé is the subject, the correct reflexive pronoun, être in the present tense, and then your past participle. For example, je me suis habillé.
I got dressed. Here are two more examples for you to get used to the structure of reflexive verbs in le passé composé. One thing I didn't talk about in much detail in this video is l'accord du participe passé, which is one of the most complex and complicated things in French grammar that deserves its own lesson, which I'll be doing in a future video.
Le passé composé does take some getting used to. There's a lot to it, but with enough practice and enough exposure to the language you will get there. Thank you everyone for watching.
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