brenyd

[solid carbon]

Please be patient

Our volunteers look into many questions every day; sometimes it takes them a little while to answer.

Pro tip: you can rename the thread title with `.tr <thread name>`

Make it descriptive, including relevant context, but also to the point. This way you improve your chances of getting a more relevant and specific answer.

[merry thunder]

jouer is a regular -er verb
you can simply conjugate it by knowing your regular -er conjugations. So you only have to learn this pattern once for a large portion of French verbs.
take chanter or danser for instance, you just take the root and add the appropriate ending

not all verbs follow the same conjugation patterns though.
The regular -er verbs are the largest group, followed by regular -ir verbs. Then, you have -re verbs which have multiple subgroups.
In addition, the most common verbs in the language tend to be very irregular. For verbs like être, avoir, aller for instance, you kinda have to learn them by heart

note that a lot of forms are compound tenses. Such tenses only use the past participle of the verb, which is the same for all compound conjugations. So really, "j'avais joué" and "j'ai joué" for instance use the same form

[atomic ore]

slowly but surely you will learn. memorisation and time. yes there are patterns, and yes there are some logic like english as you have pointed out (i will have played - j'aurai joué; word for word.)

don't overwhelm yourself with these things. take it little by little, conquer tense by tense and you will soon master them

when i was B1 i didn't know most of these tenses, and it took time to learn and master them all

[merry thunder]

Yeah it's as flutters says; don't learn everything at once, focus on small objectives.

You can't learn a martial art by learning every technique and trying to put them all in motion at once. You first learn the basic motions, then master them, before moving on to the next ones and so on.

Just focus on one tense at a time.

Thx flutters

[cedar jungle]

Should be noted that some of these are unused: subjunctive imperfect (je jouasse) and subjunctive pluperfect (j’eusse joué). Otherwise, most of these are compounds where you only have to care about the auxiliary verb.

Exempting the literary ones, French has five simple tenses. Simple means that they change form and only use that verb. These would be :
the present (je joue)
the imperfect (je jouais)
the simple future (je jouerai)
the conditional present (je jouerais)
and the subjunctive present (que je joue).

Otherwise, they’re all compound tenses; compound means that they involve an auxiliary. Notice how the perfect and pluperfect use the auxiliary + past participle in « j’ai joué / j’avais joué » ?
A lot of French tenses are like that so if you learn avoir/être, you can get a lot of mileage out of that

Even then there are traits within each of those five simple tenses that can make things easier.
The imparfait endings are always the same and their stems can easily be derived from the plural second person present.
The simple future and conditional present tenses can be derived by adding the future stem (almost always the verb’s infinitive) plus the endings of avoir in the present for the future, as imperfect for the conditional.
The subjunctive stem can be found on the present third person plural.