I'm no French teacher, it's true, but I think it would be good to get some posts on here that seek to cover some of the basics of French grammar, to help explain some of my other posts further down the line! Today, then, I want to briefly cover the Present Tense, which will hopefully provide a useful basis for more to come!
The Present Tense is, unsurprisingly, the verb tense that is used when talking about actions that occur in the present. Verbs, as you may well know, are the words that explain actions, and usually follow the pattern of "to x" - such as, to do, to be, to have, to go, etc. In French, verbs are conjugated - that is, given a different form - depending on the person doing the verb (the subject) and the tense or mood, such as the past, the present, or the conditional. It's something that doesn't really get talked about in English; for instance, we don't really think of the differences between "I am" and "You are" in relation to the verb "to be", but it's a very important idea to grasp in order to follow in French.
Verb Conjugations
In French, there are two types of verbs - regular (following a pattern) and irregular (following little or no pattern) - that are spread through three groups. These groups are helpfully called first, second, and third group. First Group verbs all end in "-er" and are regular; Second Group verbs end in "-ir" and are also regular; while Third Group verbs are all irregular, and a lot of them end in "-re". Let's look at this in action, demonstrated with the three regular verbs, regarder (to watch), finir (to finish) and descendre (to go down):
These kinds of verb tables are sort of the bread and butter of learning French, so there'll be plenty of these things coming out on this blog!
For all regular verbs, whether they're "-er", "-ir" or "-re" verbs, they drop those suffixes and then add the endings that you can see in the above table.
The problem comes with the Third Group, with the irregular verbs that you come across. You see, irregular verbs are some of the most common, most useful verbs in the language. In particular, avoir (to have) and être (to be) are perhaps the most important verbs in the dictionary, and really ought to be learned by heart!
Aside from être, which is wholly irregular in every tense due, in part, to the fact it has partially evolved from the Latin stare, all of these verbs do have an element of regularity when you compare them to others. Look, for instance, at the bottom line of the above table - we've got vont, ont, sont and font, all fairly similar, no? A lot of irregular verbs still follow a pattern, it's usually just a matter of trying to find it. For example, pouvoir (to be able to) has the same pattern as vouloir (to want) and devoir (to have to). So there are degrees of regularity, even within the irregular verbs!
Using the Present Tense
So that's how the present tense is formed, but what is it used for? Well, more than you might think.
In addition to present actions, or states of being, the French use the present tense to explain immediate future actions. For example, if you want to say "I'm working tomorrow", you would use the present tense, "je travaille demain". This example also leads me on to the other use for the tense - the present progressive.
In English, the present progressive "I am - ing" is used fairly often, whereas it doesn't really exist in French. There is the expression "être en train de" which means "to be in the process of", but that is only used to emphasize the point that you are doing something. To say "I'm reading a book", you would use the present tense, "je lis un livre".
Finally, the present tense is used with "depuis" (for, since) to explain an action that began in the past continues into the present. You'll see an example of this in my last blog, as it happens! In that post, you'll see that I talk about how long I have worked for the civil service with the phrase "je travaille là depuis dix-sept ans", which means "I have worked there for seventeen years". So it's a past tense phrase in English that is expressed through the present tense in French, through the use of "depuis".
Confusing stuff, but it's all part of the joy of learning French!
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