Three Very Common And Important French Verbs – Être, Avoir and Aller

Hopefully you have read my article on verbs and understand what they are and what they do in French.

These 3 verbs are some of most common you will find in the French language and I will be mainly focusing on how they work in the present tense.

• Être means “To Be”
• Avoir means “To Have”
• Aller means “To Go”

They are all irregular, which is of course annoying and it means your need to focus on learning them as a beginner.

However, you should learn them well as they have a lot of importance both on their own and when trying to form other tenses.   

The Verb – Avoir – In French

Avoir maens  “to Have” 

Present Tense

J’ai	I have
Tu as	You have
Il/Elle  a	He/She has
Nous avons	We have
Vous avez	You have
Ils ont	They have

We use this verb when we want to express ownership or possession, in the same way in English we would say “I have” if we own something.

This verb is also used to express age. The French literally say “I have 20 years” when they are saying their age.

The verb – Être – In French

Etre means “To Be”

If you think about this word in English, we wouldn’t say “I be”, we would say “I am”. This is exactly what I mean by being irregular.

We are so used it to English we just see this as normal, but when you stop and think about it, it doesn’t really follow the rules like other words.  

Present Tense

Je suis	I am
Tu es	You are
Il/Elle est	He/She is
Nous sommes	We are
Vous etes	You are
Ils/Elles sont	They are

We use this verb in the same way we do in English, to express adjectives, such “I am happy” or “she is sad”.

Strangely to say “I am hot/cold”, you actually use the verb Avoir for these two adjectives, so you say “I have hot/cold” – j’ai chaud/froid.

Which is like how they say their ages, seems strange, but it’s just the way it is so try not to make the classic mistake of getting these muddled and using the wrong verb.

Using Être and Avoir As Auxiliary Verbs

So far these verbs do not seem too difficult or unusual. However, these two verbs can also be auxiliary verbs, or they are often called ‘helping’ verbs.

Basically they are joined with another verb, so that it can make more sense. This happens in the Passé Composé which is one of the French past tenses.

We also have this concept in English, so it is not too complicated to understand.

If I say “I have danced”.

The word “have” here does not mean the usual definition, (ownership or possession). It is just there to help make sense of the verb (dance), so we understand that it is in the past.

This is how the passé composé works in the French and this sentence would be “j’ai dansé”.

However, as with everything, there are exceptions to this rule. These exceptions just replace Avoir with Etre.

Luckily most of the verbs use Avoir as an auxiliary, so you can easily learn the short list of words that use Etre instead.

The verbs that use Etre can also be a little confusing to us because when we translate it looks a bit weird.

If we look at “je suis arrivé” it reads as “I am arrived”. However this is wrong as it is actually saying “I have arrived”.

You could translate it as “I arrived” if that makes more sense to you.

This is just one of those things where the language does not translate 100%. This is difficult at first, but when you start to understand that language is more about translating concepts you will feel more comfortable, rather than being stuck with the need for a word for word translation.

This is also why it is important to try and learn all the words that use Etre as an auxiliary verb, then you will not be confused if you come across it.

Using Être and Avoir As Reflective Verbs

I will go into more detail about this in this in a separate article (You can read that post here) but basically Etre is used to say you are doing things to yourself.

If you talk about doing anything to yourself, like washing, shaving, waking up, these are known as reflective verbs and they use Etre.

As I said before, nearly all verbs use Avoir as an auxillary.

If you wanted to say “I have washed my dog”, you would say “j’ai lavé mon chien” Which you can see uses avoir.

However the second you change this to say “I have washed myself”, this becomes reflective and we need to use the reflective pronoun along with etre.

This sentence would become “je me suis lave”.

It is often wrongly assumed that you should keep using Avoir in these circumstances “jai me lave” may look like it makes more sense, but it is very wrong.

The Verb – Aller – In French

Aller means “To Go”

Here it is in the present tense

Je vais	I go
Tu vas	You go
Il/Elle va	He/She goes
Nous allons	We go
Vous allez	You go
Ils/Elles vont	They go

This verb is also used in some basic phrases such as “comment allez-vous?” or the more informal “comment vas-tu?” which basically both mean “how are you going?” or actually “How are you?”

Using Aller and The Futur Proche

like Etre and Avoir, Aller can also be an auxiliary very, but this time, it is used to make sense of verbs in the future tense in French, the Futur Proche (Near Future)

The Near Future is when something is about to happen and you would say “going to” to describe what is about to happen.

For example “I am going to dance”.

In French it would work the exact same way, you would use Aller in the present tense to say you are “going to” do something. You then just need to add the infinitive of the verb you want to use and you have formed the Futur Proche

“Je vais manger ”I am going to eat

This is a very easy way to start using the future tense without really having to learn any new conjugation rules.

Conclusion

As you can see these three verbs play a large role in understanding a large portion of French. If you can memorise and become comfortable with these three verbs it will give you a solid foundation for understanding a lot of things in the language and will make sure you can quickly progress with the French tenses.

You will now be able to use the past, present and future tenses even as a compete beginner with just these three verbs.

Take the time to learn these three verbs well. You will thank yourself later.

(Read the next lesson – French Gender Nouns)