French Past Participles

Past Participles in French

A participe passé(past participle) is a verb form that's used with an auxiliary in French compound tenses. Let's take a look at some common compound tenses in French. You'll notice that the auxiliary used is either être(to be) or avoir(to have).

Past Participles in Compound Tenses in French

Past participles can also be used as adjectives to modify a noun or pronoun. Let's take a look at some examples!

Forming Past Participles in French

Fortunately, there are rules you can follow to turn infinitives into past participles in French. For regular verbs, the infinitive endings correspond to the following past participle endings:

Regular Past Participle Endings in French

Here's how the rules work:

• An -er verb like aimer(to like) becomes aimé(liked).
• An -ir verb like finir(to finish) becomes fini(finished).
• An -re verb like vendre(to sell) becomes vendu(sold).

There are, of course, exceptions to these rules! Here are some common verbs that have an irregular past participle in French:

Irregular Past Participles in French

Past Participle Agreement in French

An important thing to keep in mind about past participles in French is that they undergo l'accord du participe passé(past participle agreement) in both gender and number! The rules for past participle agreement can seem a bit tricky until you get used to them. We'll explore different cases in the sections below to help you decide what element in a sentence the past participle must agree with! We'll start with compound tenses and then look at past participles acting as adjectives.

Compound Tenses: Auxiliary Être with Non-Pronominal Verbs

If the auxiliary être is used with a non-pronominal verb, the past participle must agree with the subject in gender and number:

• An -e is added to the past participle if the subject is feminine.
• An -s is added to the past participle if the subject is plural.

Take a look at the following examples, paying special attention to the gender and number of the subject and past participle.

Notice how in the third sentence above, because the subject is mixed gender, no -e is added to the past participle.

Of course, agreement also happens with first- and second-person subjects! Imagine that you have two roommates, Alessandra and Bruno, and that one of them went to the grocery store and left the following note for you. How could you know whether it was written by Alessandra or Bruno?

We know from the -e on the past participle allé that the note was written by Alessandra.

Compound Tenses: Auxiliary Avoir and Auxiliary Être with Pronominal Verbs

If the auxiliary avoir is used or if the auxiliary être is used with a pronominal verb, the past participle must agree with the direct object if and only if the direct object precedes the past participle:

• An -e is added to the past participle if the direct object precedes the past participle and is feminine.
• An -s is added if the direct object precedes the past participle and is plural.

Compound Tenses: Auxiliary Avoir

Let's explore how auxiliary avoir works by taking a look at the following conversation between two friends.

In Alessandra's question, the feminine direct object, ma clé(my key), comes after the past participle, so there is no agreement on the past participle. When Maëlle responds, however, the direct object precedes the past participle when it appears as the feminine direct object pronoun l'(it). This means an -e has to be added to the past participle!

Let's take a look at another example with direct object pronoun:

As we saw in the previous example, because the feminine plural direct object les(them) precedes the past participle, -es must be added to it.

Here are some other examples where the direct object precedes the past participle:

Compound Tenses: Auxiliary Être with Pronominal Verbs

Although pronominal verbs are always conjugated with the auxiliary être, they follow the same agreement rules as avoir. This means you'll have to keep track of the direct object!

Look at the following examples with the pronominal verbs se lever(to stand up) and se poser(to ask oneself).

In the first example, the direct object is the reflexive pronoun se(herself). (You can think of this as the girl standing herself up.) Because se precedes the past participle and is feminine (since it refers back to the girl), we must add an -e to the past participle.

In the second example, the direct object is la même question(the same question). Here, se is an indirect object. (You can think of this as Tiffany asking the same question to herself.) Although the direct object is feminine, because it follows the past participle, no agreement is made with the past participle.

Situations like the above can be tricky because you have to determine whether or not the reflexive pronoun is a direct object or not! Let's take a look at another pair of challenging sentences:

In the first example, because the direct object is the reflexive pronoun se (themselves), referring back to les footballeurs(the soccer players), we have to add an -s to the past participle.

In the second example, the direct object is les mains(their hands), and se is an indirect object. (The indirect object is marking the possession of the hands as belonging to the soccer players. This marking is common with body parts in French!)

Past Participles as Adjectives

If the past participle is an adjective modifying a noun or pronoun, it must agree with the noun or pronoun in gender and number:

• An -e is added to the past participle if the noun or pronoun is feminine.
• An -s is added to the past participle if the noun or pronoun is plural.

Here are some examples of past participles acting as adjectives:

Although the past participle is often next to the noun, this isn't always the case! In the last example, fatigués(tired) is modifying the plural subject ils(they).