Lesson 36: Irregular Passé Simple Patterns

In the last lesson, you learned the regular passé simple patterns. Irregular verbs change the stem, the endings, or both—but most still fall into a few recognizable groups.

We'll organize the most common irregular forms into three patterns so they're easier to recognize when you read.

Many irregular verbs use the same endings you learned for regular ‑IR verbs:

The stem may be irregular, but once you know it, the endings follow the same ‑is, ‑is, ‑it, ‑îmes, ‑îtes, ‑irent pattern.

Here is prendre fully conjugated:

The ‑i pattern appears across several common irregular verb families, including many verbs ending in ‑dre, ‑tre, ‑ire, and ‑indre.

• prendre → pris
• mettre → mis
• dire → dis
• écrire → écrivis
• voir → vis
• faire → fis

Many irregular verbs use the ‑u pattern in the passé simple:

For many of these verbs, the passé simple stem is the same as the past participle you already know:

A few important verbs, including être and mourir, use the same ‑u endings but have stems you'll need to learn separately: être → f- and mourir → mour-.

Tenir, venir, and their related verbs use their own passé simple endings:

The same pattern carries over to related verbs:

• Tenir gives the pattern for maintenir, obtenir, and soutenir.
• Venir gives the pattern for devenir, revenir, and parvenir.