Passé composé
Summary
The passé composé is the everyday past tense for completed actions, formed with the present of avoir or être plus a past participle.
Explanation
The passé composé is the main past tense of both spoken and ordinary written French; it reports finished actions and corresponds to English 'I did' or 'I have done'. It is a compound tense, built in two pieces: the present of an auxiliary verb (avoir or être) plus the past participle of the main verb, as in j'ai mangé ('I ate / I have eaten') and je suis parti(e) ('I left / I have left').
Most verbs form the past participle predictably: -er verbs give -é (parler → parlé), regular -ir verbs give -i (finir → fini), and many -re verbs give -u (vendre → vendu). A number of common verbs have irregular participles that must be learned, such as avoir → eu, être → été, faire → fait, prendre → pris, voir → vu and venir → venu.
Choosing the auxiliary is the first key decision. The great majority of verbs take avoir. A small, closed set of intransitive verbs of movement and change of state takes être: aller, venir, arriver, partir, entrer, sortir, monter, descendre, rester, tomber, naître, mourir and their compounds. In addition, all pronominal (reflexive) verbs are conjugated with être (je me suis levé(e)).
Past-participle agreement is the classic difficulty. With être, the participle agrees with the subject in gender and number, exactly like an adjective: elle est partie, ils sont partis, elles sont arrivées. With avoir, the participle does not agree with the subject; it agrees only with a preceding direct object, that is, a direct object placed before the verb (les pommes que j'ai mangées, je les ai vues). When the direct object comes after the verb, as it usually does, there is no agreement (j'ai mangé les pommes).
The other recurring pitfall is choosing between the passé composé and the imparfait. The passé composé presents an event as a completed whole that moves the narrative forward (hier, j'ai visité le musée), whereas the imparfait describes ongoing situations, descriptions and habits in the past. Mixing them up changes the meaning rather than producing an ungrammatical sentence, so the contrast must be felt, not just memorised.
Rule of thumb: pick the auxiliary (être for the movement/change-of-state list and all reflexives, otherwise avoir), add the past participle, then check agreement — with être agree with the subject, and with avoir agree only if a direct object precedes the verb.
Examples
Hier, j'ai mangé au restaurant. — Yesterday, I ate at the restaurant. (manger takes avoir; no agreement here.)
Elle est arrivée en retard. — She arrived late. (arriver takes être, so the participle agrees: arrivée.)
Nous avons pris le train de huit heures. — We took the eight o'clock train. (prendre has the irregular participle pris.)
Les lettres que j'ai écrites sont sur la table. — The letters that I wrote are on the table. (Preceding direct object (que = les lettres) triggers agreement: écrites.)
Ils se sont levés tôt ce matin. — They got up early this morning. (Pronominal verbs always take être: se sont levés.)
Common mistakes
Elle est parti hier soir.
Elle est partie hier soir.
With the auxiliary être, the past participle agrees with the subject in gender and number, just like an adjective. Since the subject elle is feminine singular, the participle takes a feminine -e: partie. Compare ils sont partis (masculine plural) and elles sont parties (feminine plural). This agreement never happens with avoir on the subject (j'ai parlé stays invariable).
Prerequisites
Related rules
past-tensecompound-tenseparticiple-agreement