How to Form the French Passé Composé | Conjugation of avoir and être with Examples

In French, the passé composé is used to describe completed past actions, such as “ate,” “went,” or “finished.” It is one of the most frequently used past tenses in everyday conversation as well as in formal writing, making it essential to understand both verb conjugation and sentence structure.

In this lesson, I will explain the construction rules of the passé composé, how to form the past participle, and the main usage patterns.

1. What Is the Passé Composé?

The passé composé is one of the French past tenses used to express actions or events that have already been completed. It corresponds closely to English sentences like “I ate”, “I went”. It is the most common past tense in spoken French.

The structure is:
Subject + Auxiliary Verb (present tense of avoir or être) + Past Participle.

In most cases, the auxiliary verb avoir is used. However, a certain group of verbs—mostly those indicating movement or change of state—require être.

2. Role of the Past Participle and the Auxiliary Verb

In the passé composé, the auxiliary verb provides the grammatical framework (tense and subject agreement), while the past participle expresses the action itself.

Example: J’ai parlé. (I spoke)

Although the auxiliary verb is in the present tense, the overall meaning is past and completed action.

3. How to Form the Past Participle

To use verbs in the passé composé, it is necessary to form the correct past participle. For regular verbs, replace the infinitive ending according to the verb group:

Many irregular verbs (e.g., avoir, être, faire, voir) must be memorized individually. Start by learning the most common ones.

4. Choosing Between avoir and être

In the passé composé, the auxiliary verb is either avoir (to have) or être (to be).

4-1: Verbs of Movement and Change of State (use être)

Verbs that indicate a change of location or state usually take être:

Other verbs involving arrival, departure, birth, death, and change of state also use être.

4-2. Reflexive Verbs (always use être)

Reflexive verbs, which describe actions performed on oneself (se + verb), also use être:

4-3. Agreement of the Past Participle with être

When the auxiliary is être, the past participle must agree in gender and number with the subject.

5. Negation in the Passé Composé

In negative sentences, ne … pas surrounds the auxiliary verb.

In spoken French, ne is often dropped:

Colloquial, but not suitable for formal writing or polite speech.

6. Forming Questions in the Passé Composé

6-1. Two Ways to Ask Questions

There are two main forms:

Examples:

6-2. Notes on Inversion

If the subject is a noun, it cannot be inverted directly. Instead, keep the noun at the front, followed by the auxiliary and the corresponding pronoun:

Here, a (3rd person singular of avoir) is inverted with elle, the pronoun corresponding to Marie.

When the auxiliary ends in a vowel and the pronoun begins with a vowel, -t- is inserted to avoid a vowel clash: a-t-elle.

7. Summary

泉（Izumi）

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