Bonjour tout le monde! Are you learning the passé composé and struggling to choose between être and avoir? Not to worry, I'm here to help!
The question I often get asked is but Alexa, when do we use être or avoir in the past tense in French? So why is knowing when to use être or avoir so important? Well, take le passé composé for example.
It's a past tense. It has to be formed of two things, okay? always in French. A, an auxiliary verb and B, a past participle.
An auxiliary verb is a key verb which helps change a verb in a specific tense. So let's have a look at this English example. I have played.
I had played. I would have played. See, without the auxiliary to have in English, we would not know the tense of this verb. It's the same for French verbs.
So we have two auxiliary verbs in French. Être, which is to be, or avoir, which is to have. For example, if we wanted to say you played in French, we would use the passé composé with avoir as the auxiliary and the past participle. So we would say tu as joué.
Can you see what? we've done. A is avoir, we are using A because it's used with the pronoun to, to a.
So you must learn by heart how to conjugate the verb to have and to be in any tenses in order to be able to conjugate all these different past tenses of course, okay? So here we have used avoir as the auxiliary and jouer as the past participle. However, if we wanted to say you. fell, okay, as in fell.
We would say tu es tombé. See what's happened here. We are using être here as the auxiliary and not avoir and tombé as the past participle.
I know this might seem a little confusing, but to follow along with me, you can download the support guide by becoming a member. So why did I use avoir for jouer and être? for tomber.
There are two categories of verbs using être in past tenses in French and these are the reflexive verbs and the movement verbs. Tomber is a movement verb and of which there are 16 to learn, so not that many. Please watch my videos on movement verbs as I explain everything in more details.
The link is in the description below. A good way to remember them is to use the acronym Dr. and Mrs. Van de Tromp. It's an acronym that allows you to remember each movement verb.
For example, the D is for devenir, to become. Je suis devenu would be the passé composé of that verb. Revenir, je suis revenu, to come back. Monter, to go up, je suis monté, rentrer.
To come back in. Rentrer. And that is, je suis rentré. I came back in. Tir, to exit.
Je suis sorti. Venir, to come. Je suis venu. Arriver, to arrive.
Je suis arrivé. Naître, to be born. Je suis né.
Descendre, to go down. Je suis descendu. Entrer, to enter. je suis entré, retourner to return, je suis retourné, tomber to fall, je suis tombé, I fell, rester to stay, je suis resté, aller to go, je suis allé, that means I went, mourir to die, je suis mort, I am dead basically, partir to leave, je suis parti. So, Not only do these verbs use être in the past tense but their past participle usually agrees in gender and number too such as elle est tombée as you can see there is double e at the end of the past participle which means that it takes two e's because elle is used at the subject so it's feminine singular.
The reflexive verbs use être as well. A reflexive verb is a verb whose direct object is the same as its subject. For example, Je me suis lavé. I washed myself. As you can see here we're using two things that tells me it's reflexive.
The reflexive pronounce me, je me and the auxiliary verb être, suis. Again you must know how to conjugate être and avoir in the present tense to be able to use the verb in the passé composé. It's very important. So je me suis lavé, I washed.
myself. Here we're using a past tense. We're using être here as an auxiliary and not avoir. Why? Because cela avait is reflexive.
Again, I covered this topic in details in other videos. The video can be found in the description below. But, and there is always a but, there are a few exceptions as some verbs can be used with both avoir and être. Use avoir when the verb is followed by the verb to be followed by the verb to be followed.
by a complement, a direct object. For example, take the verb laver again, to wash. You put it into its reflexive form, se laver, then it is used with être. Je me suis lavé, in the passé composé.
Okay? However, you use the same verb with a direct object, you use it with avoir. Have a look at this.
J'ai lavé ma voiture. So we're using the same verb here but no longer as a reflexive. Here, ma voiture is a direct object to laver. I washed my car. So therefore, we've used to have as an auxiliary and not to be.
Do you see what we've done here? The same goes for some movement verbs. For example, descendre, to go down. As I said to you, it is used with to be.
Je suis descendu. I went. down, okay? Here, there is no direct object to it because it's directly linked to me as a subject. Je suis descendu.
If there is nothing following, then use être. However, look at this. J'ai descendu les poubelles. We have a direct object here which is les poubelles. I took the bins downstairs, basically, okay?
Here, we're using the auxiliary. to have. J'ai descendu les poubelles.
And why is that? Because les poubelles is directly linked to descendre. It's no longer a movement verb linked to yourself. Please learn as many reflexive verbs as possible and all the movement verbs. There are only 16. I mean, come on.
It is important to know that the rest of the verbs use avoir in the past unless, as I said, they are either reflexive verbs well done or movement verbs, well done. I really hope this helps. As always, I cover this subject in way more details in my course LearnFrenchWithAlexa.com.
But to check out more of these topics in more details on YouTube, click these videos. That's it for me. Au revoir, à bientôt, bisous bisous, salut!