Lesson 35: Introducing the Passé Simple

You've now learned the past tenses you'll use in everyday spoken French. The passé simple is different: you'll encounter it mainly in literary and historical writing, rather than ordinary conversation.

In these contexts, it often plays the same role that the passé composé plays in everyday French, describing completed events that move a narrative forward.

In everyday French, you would be much more likely to hear:

You may rarely need the passé simple in conversation, but knowing its distinctive forms will make French literature much easier to read.

The passé simple's little book icon is there to remind you: this is a tense you'll meet on the page, not in conversation.

Regular ‑ER verbs use the stem of the infinitive with the endings below:

To form the passé simple for these verbs, follow the steps below:

Here is parler fully conjugated:

Aller is irregular in many tenses, but in the passé simple it follows this same ‑ER pattern:

Remember the spelling changes you saw with ‑cer and ‑ger verbs in the present tense? They change the same way here: the spelling adjusts when necessary to keep the c or g soft.

In the passé simple, these changes appear before endings beginning with a or â.

For ‑cer verbs, c becomes ç: commencer → commenç-

For ‑ger verbs, add an e after the g: manger → mange-

The ils/elles ending ‑èrent already begins with e, so no spelling change is needed:

• ils commencèrent
• ils mangèrent

Other stem changes from the present tense do not carry into the passé simple. For example: lever → il leva and appeler → il appela.

Regular ‑IR and ‑RE verbs share another set of endings:

To form the passé simple for these verbs, follow the steps below:

Here are finir and vendre fully conjugated:

Some verbs that are irregular in other tenses also use this same passé simple pattern, as do other verbs in their families:

• ouvrir → j'ouvris (same for couvrir, découvrir, offrir, and souffrir)
• suivre → je suivis (same for poursuivre)