French

Perfect tense with tre - talking about the past

This Revision Bite will give you practice in using the
perfect tense with tre in French so you can talk about the
past.

Forming the perfect tense with tre

The perfect tense is used to talk about something that
happened in the past. It's an action that is completely finished.
Some verbs take tre to form the perfect tense.
You need two parts to form the perfect tense with tre:

the present tense of tre

the past participle of the main verb

Agreement
When you form the perfect tense with tre, the past participle
agrees with the subject of the verb (the person doing the
action):

add -e to the past participle for feminine singular --> alle

add -s for masculine plural --> alls
add -es for feminine plural --> alles
So the perfect tense of aller (to go) is:

je suis all(e)
tu es all(e)
il est all
elle est alle
on est all(e)(s)
nous sommes all(e)s
vous tes all(e)(s)
ils sont alls
elles sont alles

Verbs that take tre in the perfect tense

A limited number of verbs take tre. Here is the list of the verbs
used with tre in the perfect tense. Try to memorise them as
the MRS VANDERTRAMP verbs:

Monter --> mont (went up)

Retourner --> retourn (returned)
Sortir --> sorti (went out)
Venir --> venu (came)
Arriver --> arriv (arrived)
Natre --> n (was born)
Descendre --> descendu (went down)
Entrer --> entr (entered)
Rester --> rest (stayed)
Tomber --> tomb (fell)
Rentrer --> rentr (went back in)
Aller --> all (went)
Mourir --> mort (died)
Partir --> parti (left)
Back to Revision Bite