Lesson 13: Irregular -OIR Verbs

The last major group of present-tense irregulars we'll look at ends in ‑OIR. These verbs do not all follow one pattern, but several common verbs fall into smaller families.

We'll start with verbs ending in ‑cevoir. Notice how recevoir changes between the singular, nous/vous, and ils/elles forms:

The ç keeps the c soft before o.

Other verbs ending in ‑cevoir, such as apercevoir (to notice) and décevoir (to disappoint), follow the same pattern.

Some common ‑OIR verbs follow individual patterns rather than a larger family. You already learned voir, devoir, pouvoir, and vouloir earlier. Two more useful verbs are savoir and valoir.

Savoir

Savoir uses sai‑ in the singular and sav‑ in the plural:

Valoir

Valoir uses vau‑ in the singular and val‑ in the plural:

Another common irregular ‑OIR verb is s'asseoir (to sit down), which has two accepted sets of present-tense forms. In one pattern, the singular uses the irregular stem assied‑; in the other, it uses assoi‑:

• je m'assieds → il s'assied
• je m'assois → il s'assoit

Falloir (to be necessary) is an impersonal verb, which means it is used only in the third-person singular. In the present tense, its form is il faut.

Depending on the sentence, il faut can mean "it is necessary", "must", or "have to."

The exact English wording changes with the sentence, but il faut always expresses some idea of necessity or requirement.

Unlike the other verbs in this lesson, there is no full six-form conjugation to learn.