3.6 Irregular verbs I — aller, faire, venir, prendre — Epoché
What you will be able to do Write the whole present tense of the four verbs French cannot do without: the verbs for going, doing, coming and taking. Build the near future out of the verb for going plus an infinitive, and see how closely it matches English going to . Use the verb for doing in the two places where it does work that English gives to other words: the weather, and the naming of an activity. Recognise the one shape that nearly all irregular French verbs share — a stem that changes between the singular and the plural while the endings stay put — so that the next few lessons feel like variations rather than a list. Sentences from this lesson, before the explanation. Read the French aloud; all of them come back below. French English Je vais bien. [1] I'm alright. Il va bien. [2] He is doing well. Nous allons bien. [3] We're fine. Elles vont bien. [4] They're fine. Je vais essayer. [5] I'm going to try. Prerequisites : 3.5 — you should produce the six present endings of both regular groups without thinking, because this lesson is about verbs whose stems misbehave while their endings mostly do not. Four verbs that account for a startling share of everything said in French. All four are irregular, and each carries a construction you will use every day. Learning them is learning four small systems, not four exceptions. The word irregular suggests there is no pattern. That is not true here. Most of the twenty-four forms in this lesson take endings you already know, in the expected places. What is irregular is the stem — and even the stem is irregular in a patterned way, which the next section sets out. Go at these verbs expecting chaos and you will make them harder than they are. What irregular actually means Many French verbs have two stems: one for the persons whose ending is silent, and a longer or differently spelled one for the persons whose ending is heard. In the present, the heard endings are the first and second person plural; the silent ones are the three singulars and the third person plural. So the split falls four against two, and for a reason: the two audible endings pull the stress off the stem, the other four keep it there, and over centuries the stressed and unstressed vowels drifted apart. You saw the mild version in lesson 3.4, where the middle vowel of the verb for buying opened up in exactly those four forms. The verbs here are the same mechanism with a larger result: the stem changes shape, not just its accent. So the useful question about any irregular verb is how many stems does it have, and where does the boundary fall . Most have two, split four against two. A few have three. A very few have a different form in almost every cell, and those you simply learn. The four verbs here are at the manageable end, and only the verb for going holds a real surprise. Table Four paradigms. Read each down the page and ask: how many stems, and where is the boundary? Person aller , to go 1 sg je vais 2 sg tu vas 3 sg il va 1 pl nous allons 2 pl vous allez 3 pl ils vont Person faire , to do, to make 1 sg je fais 2 sg tu fais 3 sg il fait 1 pl nous faisons 2 pl vous faites 3 pl ils font Person venir , to come 1 sg je viens 2 sg tu viens 3 sg il vient 1 pl nous venons 2 pl vous venez 3 pl ils viennent Person prendre , to take 1 sg je prends 2 sg tu prends 3 sg il prend 1 pl nous prenons 2 pl vous prenez 3 pl ils prennent Now answer the question for each. The verb for coming has three stems: vien- in the singular, ven- in the two audible cells, and vienn- in the third person plural, where the doubled consonant is heard. The verb for taking has the same three-way shape: prend- in the singular, pren- in the two audible cells, prenn- in the third person plural. The verb for doing is nearly regular in its singular forms. Its second person plural is the famous exception, an ending that belongs to no group and one of the few genuinely unique forms in the language. Its first person plural is spelled with one vowel and pronounced with another — the neutral vowel of the unstressed cells in lesson 3.4. The third person plural is also irregular. Trust your ear over the page there. The verb for going is the odd one: several Latin verbs fell together into one French verb, so its forms do not look as if they belong together. The four forms with silent endings come from one root, the two with audible endings and the infinitive from another. There is no derivation to learn. Even here the boundary falls four against two; the chaos is in the letters, not the architecture. Verb Stems · where the boundary falls venir three — one stem in the singular, a shorter one in the two audible cells, a doubled consonant in the third person plural prendre three — one stem in the singular, a shorter one in the two audible cells, a doubled consonant in the third person plural faire two — plus one unique second person plural, an irregular third person plural, and a first person plural whose spelling misleads aller two unrelated stems — the boundary is regular, the letters are not How to read the endings The three singular persons behave alike in all four verbs. Within each verb they sound identical — the third person differs only by a silent letter — except in the verb for going, whose first person has a different vowel from the other two; so the pronoun is again the only thing that tells you who is meant. Do not drop it. These singulars are one short syllable, fast in speech and easy to miss; the singular of the verb for going is barely more than a vowel, and beginners routinely fail to hear it. The third person plural is where the verbs part company; learn it as four sounds. The verbs for going and doing end in a nasal vowel unlike their other forms — like the verbs for being and having, the only common verbs with this ending, and so common you will know them within a week. The verbs for coming and taking have the silent ending, so what you hear is the long stem: an open vowel plus an audible n in both, spelled w