#flamdaari
swift burrow
lime helm
The usual auxiliary for a compound tense is avoir.
There are some verbs that use être as their auxiliary, you just need to learn them, you can check out Dr Mrs Vandertrampp or the house of être.
sinful patio
scenic sand
The usual auxiliary for a compound tense is avoir.
There are some verbs that use...
What does auxiliary mean?
lime helm
That's the verb that basically combines itself to the verb in its past participle form.
Avoir/être + past participle.
Finir => j'ai fini, tu as fini, etc.
Aller => je suis allé, tu es allé, etc.
Auxiliary means helper in Latin. It helps constructing a compound tense.
scenic sand
So être will be for actions like actions and avoir for others?
lime helm
Manger is also an action, yet it uses avoir. So it's got nothing to do with actions or movements.
scenic sand
How will I know wether to use avoir ou être
lime helm
There is a short list of verbs that use être.
scenic sand
Is it a matter of remembering
scenic sand
There is a short list of verbs that use être.
I see
lime helm
Yes.
dark kindle
As people above me said, it’s definitely easiest and pretty common to just memorise DR Mrs Vandertrampp when learning what verbs take ‘être’ and not ‘avoir.’ And of course also all reflexive verbs use ‘être’ for the passé composé;
If you do want to understand WHY though, here’s a little linguistic answer:
Other than the reflexive verbs, the verbs which use ‘être’ to form the passé composé are all intransitive—they don’t take an object—and further they are all considered ‘unaccusative’ linguistically in French—the action/event of the verb isn’t really necessarily being purposefully initiated by the subject, it’s just happening to them and reflects in change of state of being. Think of ‘falling’; it’s pretty hard to argue that a person is falling voluntarily. Or ‘descendre,’ meaning something like ‘go down; descend’; this word implies a change in state of being basically that isn’t necessarily considered like an overt action taken by the subject, but rather implies that the event is happening to the speaker, so it uses ‘être,’ and ‘I went down’ would be ‘Je suis descendu.e.’ BUT if these words are used with an object, i.e. ‘I went down the escalator’ then you’re implying a more intentional action and you’re doing that action to another object, so you’d use ‘avoir’—‘j’ai descendu l’escalier.’
Sorry if that’s a lot, you seem to want to know reasons and they’re a little complicated but there are some linguistically!
dark kindle
Yes! But that’s because most sentences meaning ‘I got hurt’ would be reflexive. Reflexive verbs used in the passé composé with être dont exactly always mean that the speaker did the action to themselves, but often rather that the action happened to the speaker, rather than the speaker purposefully doing it to themselves.
scenic sand
Ah je voir
dark kindle
So ‘I broke my leg’ would usually be ‘Je me suis cassé la jambe’ rather than ‘j’ai cassé ma jambe’; the latter would sound weird, like you purposefully broke your leg yourself for some reason
scenic sand
So ‘I broke my leg’ would usually be ‘Je me suis cassé la jambe’ rather than ‘j’...
Mdr
Why is there me?
If u don’t mind me asking
Oh waittt nvm
I see why
dark kindle
Oh yeah that’s because it’s reflexive!
Reflexive verbs are a lot more common in French than English and make for some weird constructions if you’re trying to translate directly
scenic sand
So I add me to a reflextive sentence
dark kindle
In English we’d say ‘I broke MY leg’ but in French we’d say ‘I am broke MYSELF the leg.’
dark kindle
So I add me to a reflextive sentence
Yep! Think of reflexive pronouns as object pronouns that just happen to refer to the same person as the subject. In English we do this too but we always say ‘self’ in reflexive pronouns.
Je —> me (myself)
Tu —> te (yourself; informal, singular)
Il/elle/on —> se (himself; herself; ‘oneself’)
Nous —> nous (ourselves)
Vous —> vous (yourself/yourselves)
Ils —> se (themselves)
Always before the verb!
And if it’s passé composé, always before the entire verb phrase (before all the verbs involved including the auxiliary)
dark kindle
Yes!
scenic sand
Accidentally removed suis