Studyfin
✨ Sign up free
Bonjour! Today we will explore how to conjugate regular -ir and -re verbs in French. You will learn the patterns to talk about actions in the present tense easily!
Every regular French verb has a stem and an ending. To start conjugating, we chop off the last two letters of the infinitive form to find our base stem.
For regular -ir verbs like 'choisir' (to choose), we remove 'ir' to get the stem. Then we add our special endings: -is, -is, -it, -issons, -issez, -issent.
For regular -re verbs like 'vendre' (to sell), we drop the 're' to find the stem. We then add the endings: -s, -s, nothing (keep the stem), -ons, -ez, -ent.
Let us analyze a real sentence: 'We finish our homework.' We choose the verb 'finir'. Since 'we' is 'nous' in French, we apply the -issons ending to get 'Nous finissons'.
Conjugate the verb 'perdre' (to lose) for the subject pronoun 'tu' (you).
- Identify the verb type. 'Perdre' ends in -re, so it follows the regular -re verb rules.
- Find the verb stem by dropping the ending. Removing 're' from 'perdre' leaves us with the stem 'perd-'.
- Identify the subject pronoun. The pronoun is 'tu' (singular, informal 'you').
- Recall the correct ending for 'tu' in the -re verb group. The ending is '-s'.
- Combine the stem and the ending. 'perd-' + '-s' equals 'perds'. Your final answer is 'Tu perds'.