16.1 A New Helping Verb
Most verbs form the passé composé with avoir, but two important groups use être:
- certain verbs of movement or change of state
- all verbs used reflexively
Here, être acts as the helping verb instead of avoir. The basic structure remains the same:
[conjugated auxiliary verb] + [past participle]
Let's begin by reviewing être in the present tense:
16.2 Gender and Number Agreement
When a non-reflexive verb forms the passé composé with être, the past participle changes to match the subject in gender and number.
Let's begin with the masculine singular form, allé, the past participle of aller. Add ‑e for feminine, ‑s for plural, or ‑es for feminine plural.
| Subject | Form | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Masculine singular | allé | Il est allé au parc. |
| Feminine singular | allée | Elle est allée au parc. |
| Masculine or mixed plural | allés | Ils sont allés au parc. |
| Feminine plural | allées | Elles sont allées au parc. |
Some pronouns do not show the subject’s gender, and on and vous may be singular or plural. For these pronouns, choose the form that matches the person or group being described:
- je suis allé/allée
- tu es allé/allée
- on est allé/allée/allés/allées
- nous sommes allés/allées
- vous êtes allé/allée/allés/allées
In VerbMaster, we simplify practice by defaulting to masculine forms unless the subject is explicitly elle or elles, and we treat nous and vous as plural. In your own writing, always match the participle to the actual person or group being described.
16.3 Which Verbs Take Être?
Nearly all of the non-reflexive verbs that use être describe motion or a change of state—coming and going, rising and falling, being born and dying—so teachers often present them as a single scene: La Maison d'Être, the House of Être. Picture each verb as something happening in and around a house. Anchoring the verbs to a place makes them easier to hold onto, and it hints at why this particular set takes être.
16.4 Dr. Mrs. Vandertrampp
Once the House of Être makes sense, you can compress the whole list into a name that's easy to scribble in a test margin. The letters of Dr. Mrs. Vandertrampp are the first letters of those seventeen verbs:
Dr
| D | devenir (to become) | devenu |
| R | revenir (to come back) | revenu |
Mrs
| M | monter (to climb) | monté |
| R | rester (to stay) | resté |
| S | sortir (to go out) | sorti |
Vander
| V | venir (to come) | venu |
| A | aller (to go) | allé |
| N | naître (to be born) | né |
| D | descendre (to descend) | descendu |
| E | entrer (to enter) | entré |
| R | rentrer (to return) | rentré |
Trampp
| T | tomber (to fall) | tombé |
| R | retourner (to return) | retourné |
| A | arriver (to arrive) | arrivé |
| M | mourir (to die) | mort |
| P | partir (to leave) | parti |
| P | passer (to pass) | passé |
Two ways in, one list to master. Think you've got them down? Try filling the whole house from memory—against the clock.
16.5 Using the Vandertrampp Verbs
Here are the Dr. Mrs. Vandertrampp verbs at work in the passé composé—watch the participles agree with each subject:
Éventuellement, elle est devenue médecin.
Eventually she became a doctor.
Les extraterrestres sont arrivés en octobre et ils sont partis en janvier.
The aliens arrived in October and left in January.
Je suis tombé amoureux de Monet quand j'ai vu ses nymphéas au Musée de l'Orangerie.
I fell in love with Monet when I saw his water lilies at the Orangerie Museum.
When These Verbs Use Avoir
A handful of these verbs—monter, descendre, sortir, passer and a few others—can also use avoir when they act directly on an object. Compare:
Nous sommes montés au troisième étage.
We went up to the third floor.
Nous avons monté les valises.
We carried the suitcases upstairs.
In the first sentence, the people themselves move. In the second, they move something else.
16.6 Reflexive Verbs in the Passé Composé
Every verb used reflexively forms the passé composé with être. The reflexive pronoun comes before the auxiliary:
[subject] + [reflexive pronoun] + [être] + [past participle]
In straightforward reflexive constructions, the past participle agrees with the subject:
Elle s'est levée très tôt ce matin.
She got up very early this morning.
Les enfants se sont habillés en rouge.
The children dressed in red.
Marie et Sophie se sont baignées dans la Seine.
Marie and Sophie bathed in the Seine.
Some reflexive constructions follow additional agreement rules, especially when another direct object appears. For example:
Elle s'est brossé les cheveux.
She brushed her hair.
Here, brossé does not take an ‑e because les cheveux is the direct object and comes after the verb. For now, focus on using être and placing the reflexive pronoun before it.
Practice Time!
Master these verb conjugations from Lesson 16