Passé simple
Summary
The passé simple is the literary narrative past for single completed actions, built with three families of endings (-a/-èrent, -it/-irent, -ut/-urent) and replaced by the passé composé in speech.
Explanation
The passé simple expresses single, completed actions in the past, and it is the tense of written narration: novels, history, fairy tales and formal journalism. It carries the foreground events of a story — what happened next, one event after another — while the imparfait supplies the background and description. In spoken French it has all but disappeared and is replaced by the passé composé: a narrator writes il ouvrit la porte, but in conversation you would say il a ouvert la porte.
There are three stem-and-ending families. (a) The -er verbs (first group) add -ai, -as, -a, -âmes, -âtes, -èrent to the stem: parler → je parlai, tu parlas, il parla, nous parlâmes, vous parlâtes, ils parlèrent. (b) Most -ir and -re verbs (the regular second group and many third-group verbs) take -is, -is, -it, -îmes, -îtes, -irent: finir → il finit, ils finirent; vendre → il vendit; partir → il partit; and irregulars such as faire → il fit, voir → il vit, prendre → il prit, écrire → il écrivit. (c) A third family, often verbs whose past participle ends in -u, takes -us, -us, -ut, -ûmes, -ûtes, -urent: courir → il courut, vouloir → il voulut, pouvoir → il put, devoir → il dut, boire → il but, lire → il lut, vivre → il vécut.
A handful of very frequent verbs have wholly irregular stems that must be learned outright: venir → je vins, il vint, ils vinrent and likewise tenir → il tint; être → je fus, il fut, ils furent; avoir → j'eus, il eut, ils eurent; naître → il naquit; mourir → il mourut. Note too the circumflex that marks the nous and vous forms across all three families: -âmes/-âtes, -îmes/-îtes, -ûmes/-ûtes (nous fûmes, vous prîtes, nous courûmes). In practice the third-person singular and plural are by far the most common forms, since narration is mostly told in the third person.
The pitfalls are several. First, do not use the passé simple in conversation — it sounds stilted or archaic; reserve it for writing. Second, the irregular stems are many and unpredictable, so they have to be memorised rather than derived. Third, the third-person singular of -er verbs (il parla) is easy to confuse with neighbouring forms and with the present (il parle), so watch the ending carefully. Finally, remember the circumflex on the nous and vous forms, which is the most frequently dropped accent in this tense.
Rule of thumb: think in three ending families — -a/-èrent for -er verbs, -it/-irent for most -ir/-re verbs, and -ut/-urent for the -u group — and treat the passé simple as a written-only tense: recognise it when you read, but reach for the passé composé when you speak.
Examples
Il ouvrit la porte et entra sans bruit. — He opened the door and went in without a sound. (Two -ir/-re-type actions (ouvrit, entra): foreground narrative events, typical of novels rather than speech.)
Ils arrivèrent au village à la tombée de la nuit. — They arrived at the village at nightfall. (arrivèrent is the -er family ending -èrent (third-person plural).)
Elle prit la lettre et la lut lentement. — She took the letter and read it slowly. (prit (prendre, -it family) and lut (lire, -ut family) sit side by side, showing two different families.)
Le roi mourut en 1715. — The king died in 1715. (mourut is an irregular stem; the passé simple is standard in historical narration.)
Nous fûmes surpris par l'orage. — We were caught off guard by the storm. (fûmes is être with the circumflex on the nous form (-ûmes).)
Quand il la vit, il comprit tout. — When he saw her, he understood everything. (vit (voir) and comprit (comprendre) are both irregular -it-family forms.)
Common mistakes
Il parlit longtemps.
Il parla longtemps.
-er verbs (group 1) form the passé simple with the -a/-èrent family of endings, not the -it/-irent family used by most -ir/-re verbs. Parlit wrongly borrows the -it ending; the correct third-person singular of parler is parla.
Prerequisites
Related rules
past-tenseliterarynarrative