Language/French/Grammar/Easy-way-of-generating-the-present-tense

An easy way of generating the present tense

For regular verbs ending in -er (like donner), -ir (the finir kind whose stems sometimes end in -iss-: fin-iss-ons, fin-iss-ant, fin-iss-aient, etc., but NOT the dormir kind) or -re (like vendre), take the infinitive form of the verb, omit the ending -er, -ir or -re (this creates a stem: donn-, fin-, vend-) and add the following endings:

French Present Tense Endings

	je	tu	il/elle	nous	vous	ils/elles
-er verbs	-e	-es	-e	-ons	-ez	-ent
-ir verbs (most verbs)	-is	-is	-it	-issons	-issez	-issent
-re verbs	-s	-s	-	-ons	-ez	-ent

Examples

For example:

Infinitive	Stem	Present tense
donner	donn-	je donn- e, etc.
finir	fin-	je fin- is, etc.
vendre	vend-	je vend- s, etc.

Related Lessons

• Pronouns referring to groups of mixed gender
• Future Tense
• Compound Tenses
• Choosing between il est and c'est
• Easy way of generating the imperfect subjunctive
• How to write and read numbers
• Subject verb agreement
• Prepositions
• Subject verb agreement when subject quantifiers are present
• "C'est" or "Ce sont"
• Place adverbs
• Adverbs
• Directly transitive verbs
• Verbs which are directly transitive in French
• Infinitives