#strideytidey

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hallow vortexBOT
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kind osprey
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both être and avoir are auxilary verbs in forming the passé composé

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most verbs simply take avoir

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"j'ai fait, nagé, cuisiné, lu, etc."

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but a certain class of intransitive verbs mostly related to motion, like aller and venir, take être

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and then all verbs take être when there's a reflexive pronoun

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étais is the imperfect form of être and it serves the same function as avais would with a verb that takes avoir

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something like "I had gone to pick plants" instead of "I went/have gone..."

spice rain
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Okay that makes sense kind of sort of lol.

Can you explain a little more about when you would use the imperfect form?

kind osprey
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Have you learned the imperfect form at all?

spice rain
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So far I don't think so. I'm in Intro to French 2, so we're still quite early on.

kind osprey
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better to learn the imperfect than to try to learn what's effectively the imperfect plus passé composé

spice rain
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Gotcha, I'll take a gander at that. Thanks for the help!

kind osprey
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no problem

grand atlas
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To add a bit of clarity + some terms to look into :

Imparfait :
J'allais - I was going

Passé composé :
Je suis allé(e) - I went/I have gone

Plus-que-parfait :
J'étais allé(e) - I had gone

rustic mesa
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^^^

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This would be more aptly called plus-que-parfait, not imparfait (imperfect)

rustic mesa
# kind osprey both être and avoir are auxilary verbs in forming the passé composé

Search up Dr. & Mrs Vandertramp to know which usually do (some have different meaning if you use avoir vs etre). A lot of the terms have to do with position if that helps memorizing at all
There’s also a few other cases that causes one to use être as the auxilary for normal verbs (but you can see that later perhaps since they involve other stuff)