The présent

Mode

Indicatif

Level

A1

Shape

Simple

Negation

ne … pas

Verbs in Phonique

700+

In the app

Free

The présent is the first tense anyone learns in French, and the one you will use more than all the others combined. It covers what is happening now, what happens regularly, and what is simply true - and with a time marker it stretches into the near future as well.

It is also the tense that carries the most irregularity. That is not bad luck: the verbs used most often are the ones that resist regularisation, in French as in English. So the honest way to learn it is in two halves - the endings, which are systematic, and roughly twenty high-frequency verbs, which are not.

How it’s formed

Drop the infinitive ending and add the ending for the person. French verbs fall into three families, named after those infinitive endings.

-ER verbs are by far the largest group - about 90% of all French verbs, and every new verb that enters the language joins it. Drop -er and add -e, -es, -e, -ons, -ez, -ent.

Note that parle, parles and parlent are pronounced identically. Three of the six forms sound the same, which is why the pronoun is doing so much work in spoken French.

-IR verbs take an extra -iss- in the plural. Drop -ir and add -is, -is, -it, -issons, -issez, -issent.

-RE verbs are the smallest regular family. Drop -re and add -s, -s, -, -ons, -ez, -ent - the third person singular takes no ending at all.

The irregular verbs that matter

Four verbs are irregular, extremely common, and load-bearing. Être and avoir are also the auxiliaries used to build every compound tense, so getting them wrong compounds into six other tenses.

Aller is worth its place here for a second reason: aller + an infinitive is how French expresses the near future. Je vais partir - I’m going to leave. That construction uses the présent of aller and nothing else, so the six forms above unlock the future before you have learned the future tense.

When to use it

1. Something happening now. Je travaille. - I’m working.
2. Habits and routines. Elle prend le train tous les jours. - She takes the train every day.
3. General truths. L’eau bout à cent degrés. - Water boils at 100 degrees.
4. The near future, with a time marker. On part demain. - We leave tomorrow.
5. Narration in the present tense, for immediacy - common in news headlines and storytelling.

There is one use that catches English speakers out. To say how long something has been going on, French uses the présent with depuis, where English uses a perfect:

J’habite ici depuis cinq ans. - I have lived here for five years.

The action is still going on, so French keeps it in the present. Saying j’ai habité ici depuis cinq ans implies you have stopped.

In the negative

French negation is a pair of words wrapping the verb: ne goes in front, pas behind. Before a vowel or a mute h, ne elides to n'.

The negative column in every table above shows this. Notice what happens to the pronoun: j’ai becomes je n’ai pas, because the elision moves - je no longer sits in front of a vowel once ne is between them.

Common mistakes

Common questions

Is there a difference between je parle and je suis en train de parler?

Both are present tense, but en train de insists on the action being in progress right now. French has no separate continuous tense, so je parle covers both “I speak” and “I am speaking” - reach for en train de only when the in-progress reading matters and the context doesn’t already carry it.

Why does aller look nothing like its infinitive?

Because it is one of a handful of verbs built from more than one Latin stem. Je vais, nous allons and ils vont come from three different roots. There is no rule to learn - aller, être, avoir and faire are memorised, which is exactly the kind of thing Phonique will help you master.

When do I use tu and when vous?

Tu for one person you know well or who is younger; vous for someone older, a stranger, anyone in a professional setting, and always for more than one person. When in doubt use vous - being over-formal is a much smaller error than being over-familiar.

Does the présent ever talk about the future?

Yes, when the context makes the timing clear: je pars demain (I’m leaving tomorrow) is completely natural. English does the same thing.