Does -battu really have an irregular past participle

Question

This lesson has me scratching my head with the simple question - why is it here? One of the very few things I remember from O level french (failed) was that regular past participles form ER>é, IR>i and RE>u so to my way of thinking battre follows the regular rule. Maybe this is because french is taught differently in France than it was in England 40 years ago, I remember reading somewhere that the french don't have the same concept of group 3 (-RE) verbs but have several smaller groups including -DRE.

Accepted Answer

Hi 
I have checked and the verb 'battre' and its derivatives stand on its own for conjugation purposes, hence the separate lesson.
Hope this helps!

Answer

The past participle of battre really is battu. Whatever rule says otherwise is simply wrong in this case.

Answer

Robert isn't arguing about that, Chris. He's just questioning why it needs a separate lesson when it follows the normal pattern for -RE verbs. Battre is irregular in the present tense (je bats not je batts), but it's regular in the passé composé. It seems that English-speaking grammar books classify verbs a bit differently from French (-RE instead of -DRE), but even English grammar books will list battre as irregular.

https://french.kwiziq.com/my-languages/french/glossary/42