Ssbief (zebi)

[prisma rampart]

Please be patient

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

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[supple jacinth]

When you invert in the third person in the present and simple future for the first group of conjugations, you add T between the verb and pronoun. It's a holdover from when Latin was evolving into Latin. You see, the third person singular conjugation used to end in a T; you can see this more clearly in the imparfait: « il/elle/on parlait ». As Latin slowly evolved into French, it lost this final T sound in the present conjugation but when inverted, it was still kept because the third person pronouns started with a vowel. Thus, we have this -t- insertion.

Where does that leave us? Well, for the first group conjugation (verbs ending in -er like commencer, parler, manger), whenever we're inverting with the present or future tense, we insert this -t-.
Il mange => Mange**-t-il
Il mangera => Mangera-t-il
This also happens with « avoir ».
Il a => A-t-**il

[flint locust]

Ooohh that makes sense! Is it common to do that though?

[supple jacinth]

It's the rule in inversion

[flint locust]

Oui mais is it common for people to invert them when speaking?

[tidal notch]

Inversion is the formal way to ask a question, so no.

[flint locust]

Ohhh okk thank you!!!