Être and avoir are the two most important French verbs. They form the backbone of every compound tense in the language — passé composé, plus-que-parfait, futur antérieur, subjonctif passé — and they appear in dozens of everyday fixed expressions. If you are preparing for TCF, DELF, or DALF, learn these two verbs cold before anything else.
The Present Tense of Être (To Be)
Être is fully irregular — none of its forms can be derived from a pattern. It must be memorised outright.
Core uses of être: identity (Je suis étudiant.), nationality (Elle est française.), profession without article (Il est médecin.), location (Nous sommes à Paris.), description (C'est difficile.), and as the auxiliary verb for a specific group of verbs in compound tenses.
The Present Tense of Avoir (To Have)
Avoir is equally irregular in the present tense. The h in j'ai, il a is silent, and the final s in as and avez is not pronounced but reappears in liaison.
Core uses of avoir: possession (J'ai une voiture.), age (Elle a 25 ans. — French uses avoir, not être, for age), and as the auxiliary verb for most verbs in compound tenses.
Être and Avoir as Auxiliary Verbs in the Passé Composé
The passé composé is formed with an auxiliary verb (être or avoir) plus the past participle. The vast majority of French verbs use avoir. A specific group use être instead — and with être, the past participle must agree in gender and number with the subject.
Verbs that take être as auxiliary fall into two categories:
Elle est partie hier soir. (She left last night.) — partir takes être; participle agrees: partie.Nous avons mangé à midi. (We ate at noon.) — manger takes avoir; no agreement.
Fixed Expressions With Avoir You Need to Know
French uses avoir — not être — in a number of expressions where English uses "to be." These trip up learners at every level and appear regularly in exam reading and writing tasks.
Verbs That Can Take Either Être or Avoir (With Different Meanings)
A small but important group of verbs can use either auxiliary depending on whether they are transitive (take a direct object) or intransitive. The auxiliary choice completely changes the meaning.
The rule: when one of these verbs has a direct object, it uses avoir. When it has no object, it uses être. This distinction appears in B2 and C1 exam writing tasks — getting it right signals genuine understanding of the auxiliary system.
How to Practise Être and Avoir
The most effective way to internalise both verbs is to practise their conjugations across multiple tenses — not just the present, but also the imparfait (j'étais, j'avais), the futur simple (je serai, j'aurai), and the conditionnel (je serais, j'aurais), since all of these appear in B1–C1 exam writing tasks.
Use the French Verb Conjugator to pull up the complete conjugation table for être and avoir across all tenses. Work through each column systematically — present, imparfait, passé composé, futur, conditionnel, subjonctif — until you can produce every form without looking. These two verbs are the most frequently used in the French language; the time investment pays back immediately.
