bonjour tulmund are you learning the passe composer and struggling to choose between and avoir not to worry i'm here to help the question i often get asked is but alexa when do we use etr or avoir in the past tense in french so why is knowing when to use et or avoir so important well take le passe composer for example it's a past tense it has to be formed of two things okay always in french a an auxiliary verb and be 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 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 passive composite with avoir as the auxiliary and the past participle so we would say tu can you see what we've done a is avoir we are using a because it's used with the pronoun 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 jewish as the past participle however if we wanted to say you fell okay as in we would say see what what's happened here we are using etre here as the auxiliary and not avoir and don't be 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 joey and etre for tombe there are two categories of verbs using et in past tenses in french and these are the reflexive verbs and the movement verbs tombi 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 doctor and mrs van der trump it's an acronym that allows you to remember each movement verb for example the d is for davenir to become je suis de venu would be the passive composer of that verb revenue to come back to go up just to come back in and that is je suis [Music] that means i went murir to die more i am dead basically to leave jesus so not only do these verbs use in the past tense but their past participle usually agrees in gender and number two such as el e tonbe as you can see there is double e at the end of the past participle which means that it takes two is because l is used at the subject so it's feminine singular the reflexive verbs use etras well a reflexive verb is a verb whose direct object is the same as its subject for example i washed myself as you can see here we are using two things that tells me it's reflexive the uh reflexive pronouns and the auxiliary verb again you must know how to conjugate and avoir in the present tense to be able to use the verb in the passive composite it's very important so je me sui levi i washed myself here we're using a past tense we're using etre here as in auxiliary and not avoir why because la ve 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 use avoir when the verb is followed by a complement a direct object for example take the verb la ve again to wash you put it into its reflexive form so lavi then it is used with suilave in the passe composi okay however you use the same verb with a direct object you use it with avoir have a look at this [Music] so we're using the same verb here but no longer as a reflexive here my water is a direct object to lavi i washed my car so therefore we've used to have as an auxiliary and not to be you see what we've done here the same goes for some movement verbs for example descend to go down as i said to you it is used with to be je suis de sandu i went down okay here there is no direct object to it because it's directly linked to me as the subject je suis de sandu if there is nothing following then use however look at this je we have a direct object here which is les paul belle i took the pins down stairs basically okay here we're using the auxiliary to have je de san du les paubelen why is that because lipo bell is directly linked to the sound it's no longer a movement verb linked to yourself please learnt 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 covered this subject subject subjecting way more details in my course learn french with alexa.com but to check out more of these topics in more details on youtube click these videos that's it for me au revoir [Music] foreign