French Compound Tense

Written by Qualified French Expert Aurélie Drouard HKH, Licence d'anglais LLCE

Last updated: 2017-04-04

In French there are two main groups of tenses: simple tenses and compound tenses. Compound tenses are tenses where the verb is made of two words:

1 - Auxiliary verb (avoir or être) in a specific simple tense (Présent / Futur / Imparfait...)
2 - Past participle of the main verb

For example

• Le Passé Composé = auxiliary in Le Présent + past participle
• Le Plus-que-Parfait = auxiliary in L'Imparfait + past participle
• Le Futur Antérieur = auxiliary in Le Futur + past participle
• Le Conditionnel Passé = auxiliary in Le Conditionnel + past participle
• Le Subjonctif Passé = auxiliary in Le Subjonctif Présent + past participle