French Verb Groups Explained

We sorted our list of the 600 most common French verbs by group. The 1st group is by far the biggest, with 411 verbs, and the 3rd group has 142. Yet the ten most common French verbs are all 3rd group: être, avoir, dire, aller, faire, pouvoir, vouloir, savoir, devoir and prendre. So the smaller, less regular group is the one you'll hear most.

Each of the 600 has its own page in our French conjugation tables, with every form in 13 tenses. The page names the verb's group, and the label links to the matching section below.

The three groups at a glance

The two 1st group rows add up to 411 verbs.

Which group is the most common?

That depends on what you count. Count verbs, and the 1st group wins easily, with 411 of our 600, more than two thirds. Count how often they're used, and the 3rd group wins. Our list is ranked by how often each verb occurs in film and TV subtitles, and the whole top ten is 3rd group. So are 15 of the top 20. In the top 100, 41 verbs are 3rd group, 55 are 1st group (42 regular and 13 with a spelling change) and just 4 are 2nd group.

So the 3rd group is under a quarter of the list but dominates everyday speech. You meet it first and most often, while most of the verbs you add later will be 1st group.

The 1st group: -er verbs

Every verb whose infinitive ends in -er belongs to the 1st group, apart from aller. Drop the -er to get the stem, then add the endings. Here is the present tense of parler, to speak:

The past participle is parlé and the present participle parlant. The 329 regular verbs in this group follow parler in every tense, so once you know it, you can conjugate more than half of the 600 without looking anything up.

Speaking them is easier than spelling them. Je parle, tu parles, il parle and ils parlent all sound the same, so only nous parlons and vous parlez stand out when you hear them. That makes spelling the hard part of the 1st group, and 82 of its verbs add one more rule.

1st group verbs that change their spelling

These 82 verbs take parler's endings, but their stem changes in some forms, either to keep a sound the same or to show that a vowel is now pronounced differently. There are five patterns.

-cer: c becomes ç. Before a or o, a plain c would sound like k, so it takes a cedilla: nous commençons, je commençais. Commencer, avancer, lancer, placer and remplacer all work this way.

-ger: add an e. Before a or o, a g would sound hard, as in gare, so an e goes in to keep it soft: nous mangeons, je mangeais. You'll see it in manger, changer, bouger, protéger and diriger.

-yer: y becomes i. Before a silent e, the y turns into i: j'envoie, je nettoie. Appuyer works the same way. Verbs in -ayer can go either way, so essayer gives j'essaie or j'essaye, and payer gives je paie or je paye. Envoyer has one more quirk, an irregular future: j'enverrai.

e + consonant + er: e becomes è. In verbs like lever, acheter and emmener, the e before the last consonant becomes è when the ending is silent: je lève, j'achète, j'emmène. In the present, the silent endings are the -e, -es and -ent of je, tu, il and ils, so the nous and vous forms keep the plain e. The future has the è throughout: j'achèterai. Appeler and jeter double the consonant instead: j'appelle, je jette, and in the future j'appellerai. Verbs built on them, such as rappeler, do the same.

é + consonant + er: é becomes è. Espérer, préférer and répéter turn é into è before a silent ending: j'espère, je préfère, je répète, but nous espérons. Unlike acheter, they keep the é in the future, and our tables give j'espérerai, the traditional spelling. The 1990 spelling reform also allows j'espèrerai, so you'll see both.

If a 1st group form looks odd, look at the stem first. The endings are parler's in all 82 verbs.

The 2nd group: -ir verbs with -iss-

The 2nd group is the -ir verbs that put -iss- between the stem and the ending in the plural of the present, the present participle and several other forms. Here is finir, to finish:

The past participle is fini and the present participle finissant.

It's a small group, with 47 of our 600 and only 4 of the top 100, and it's as regular as the 1st group. Learn finir and you can conjugate the rest. Choisir gives nous choisissons and choisissant, and réussir and grandir follow the same pattern. The one oddity is haïr, which belongs here but drops its two dots in je hais and keeps them in nous haïssons.

The singular has no -iss-. Je finis and tu finis end in -s and il finit in -t, the same endings a 3rd group verb like partir uses (je pars). That means the singular can't tell you the group. The plural can.

The 3rd group: everything else

The 3rd group is every verb that fits neither of the first two. It has 142 of our 600 verbs, under a quarter, but it includes all ten of the most common and 41 of the top 100. It's often called the irregular group, and plenty of its verbs earn the name. Many others follow small patterns, so it's easier to learn as a few families than as 142 separate verbs. Here is how our 142 split by ending:

-re verbs. This is the biggest family, with 87 verbs. Vendre is the model for the regular ones: je vends, il vend, nous vendons, and the past participle vendu. Note that il vend has no -t after the d. Attendre, entendre, répondre and perdre follow vendre. Prendre changes its stem instead: je prends, nous prenons, ils prennent, past participle pris. Comprendre follows prendre. Others, including être, faire, dire, mettre, croire, connaître and boire, have patterns of their own.

-ir verbs without -iss-. Partir gives je pars, nous partons, ils partent, with parti and partant. Dormir gives je dors, nous dormons and dormant. The singular drops the consonant before -ir, the t of partir or the m of dormir, and the plural brings it back. Sortir works the same way. Ouvrir has a pattern of its own: j'ouvre looks like a 1st group form, and the past participle is ouvert. Venir and tenir share another pattern, and courir has its own.

-oir verbs. There are only 16, yet five of them are in the top ten: avoir, pouvoir, vouloir, savoir and devoir. Most have forms of their own, so learn them one by one. Voir gives je vois, nous voyons and vu. Falloir has only an il form: il faut.

The one -er verb. Aller is the only -er verb outside the 1st group, and its forms show why: je vais, il va, nous allons, ils vont, and the future j'irai. That's three different stems in one verb.

Some grammar books leave être and avoir out of the three groups, because they also serve as the helper verbs for compound tenses. Our tables count both in the 3rd group. Counted the other way, our 3rd group has 140 verbs and eight of the top ten.

How to tell -ir verbs apart

An infinitive in -ir could be 2nd or 3rd group, and nothing in its spelling tells you which. Leaving aside the -oir verbs, our 600 include 85 that end in -ir. Of those, 47 are 2nd group and 38 are 3rd, so if you guessed 2nd group every time, you'd be wrong 38 times out of 85.

The test is the nous form or the present participle. If it has -iss-, the verb is 2nd group. If it doesn't, the verb is 3rd group.

The je forms and the past participles look alike. The nous forms don't. Check a new -ir verb's nous form once and you'll know its group for good.

What the group doesn't tell you

The group tells you the endings. It doesn't tell you whether the passé composé takes avoir or être. Most verbs take avoir. A short list takes être, and it mixes 1st group verbs such as arriver, rester and tomber with 3rd group verbs such as aller, venir, partir, sortir, mourir and devenir. Every reflexive verb takes être too, whatever its group. Partir and dormir follow the same pattern in the present, yet one gives je suis parti and the other j'ai dormi.

In what order to learn them

1. The 1st group pattern. Parler's endings cover 411 of the 600 verbs, spelling-change verbs included, so they come first.
2. The top ten 3rd group verbs, by heart. They're the ten most common verbs on our list, so learn them early, one verb at a time, the way you'd learn vocabulary.
3. The spelling changes, as you meet them. Each is one small rule on top of endings you already know.
4. The 2nd group. It's small, and once you know finir, you know the group.
5. The rest of the 3rd group, in families. Take the -re verbs like vendre and attendre together, then the -ir verbs like partir and dormir, and leave the -oir verbs to learn one by one.

To drill one family at a time, the French verb conjugation worksheet generator prints exercises for the verbs and tenses you choose. Put vendre, attendre and perdre on one sheet, and the -re family starts to look a lot less irregular.

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Licenses and credits

Verb forms come from English Wiktionary through kaikki.org (CC BY-SA 4.0). The verb ranking comes from Hermit Dave's FrequencyWords list, built from OpenSubtitles 2018 (CC BY-SA 4.0).