Lesson 7: Present tense — regular -ER verbs

Part 1: Why -ER is the headline group

French verbs come in three families, sorted by their infinitive ending:

• -ER (parler, manger, aimer) — ~80% of all verbs, fully regular
• -IR (finir, choisir) — second group, ~10%, mostly regular (Lesson 9)
• -RE (vendre, prendre) — third group, irregular zoo (Lesson 10)

So when in doubt about a French verb you've never seen, assume it's -ER and conjugate it normally. You'll be right four times out of five. Every new verb you'll meet in this lesson — and most of the verbs you'll meet for the next year — follows the exact same six-ending pattern.

English baseline: in English, verbs barely change. I speak, you speak, we speak, they speak — same form. Only third-person singular adds an -s (he speaks). French is the opposite: every person gets its own ending. That's the adjustment.

Part 2: The core -ER pattern

Every regular -ER verb = stem + ending. Take parler (to speak) → drop the -er → stem = parl- → add the six endings:

Ear trap #1. Four of the six forms — je parle, tu parles, il parle, ils parlent — sound identical. The endings -e, -es, -ent are all silent. Only the pronoun tells you who's doing the action.

Ear trap #2. The ending -ent on a verb is always silent. This is NOT like moment or vraiment (where you do hear something nasal). Ils parlent sounds like "eel parl", never "eel parl-ENT". Burn this in — English speakers chronically over-pronounce final consonants in French.

Only two forms sound distinct:

• nous parlons → "par-LOHN" (nasal, like on in Lesson 1)
• vous parlez → "par-LAY" (closed é sound)

So in speech, the contrast that actually matters is the nous / vous forms vs everything else. The other four ride on the pronoun.

Quick liaison reminder

After nous, vous, ils, elles, on, if the verb starts with a vowel (or silent h), liaison is mandatory — the silent final consonant wakes up:

• nous aimons → "noo-zay-MOHN"
• vous écoutez → "voo-zay-koo-TAY"
• ils habitent → "eel-zah-BEET"
• on étudie → "ohn-nay-tew-DEE"

Quick élision reminder

Je + verb starting with a vowel = j' :

• j'aime, j'écoute, j'habite, j'étudie, j'arrive, j'adore

Never write je aime. It's a hard mistake — like writing I amn't in English. Mandatory, not stylistic.

Part 3: Spelling-change -ER verbs

Same pattern, same endings. But for a few stems, French changes the spelling to preserve the sound. There are four small families. You're not learning new conjugations — you're learning when to tweak a letter so the pronunciation doesn't crash.

Type 1: verbs in -ger (manger, voyager, nager, changer, partager)

In French, g before a or o sounds like English g in go. To keep the soft "zh" sound (like English measure), you wedge a silent e before -ons:

Only the nous form gets the extra e. Every other form is normal.

Type 2: verbs in -cer (commencer, placer, prononcer, avancer)

In French, c before o sounds like "k". To keep the soft "s" sound, you add a cedilla ç before -ons:

Again — only the nous form is affected.

Type 3: acheter-type (e → è)

In acheter, the first e is a weak schwa (barely audible). When the stress lands on it — which happens whenever the ending after it is silent — French upgrades it to a real, open "eh" sound by writing è with an accent grave:

The "boot" pattern: picture an L-shaped boot covering the four forms that change (je, tu, il, ils) — they wear the è. The two forms in the middle (nous, vous) keep the plain e.

       boot shape:
    je  ●            ●  ils
    tu  ●            ●     ← change (è)
    il  ●  nous  vous      ← no change

Same pattern: préférer → je préfère, nous préférons; espérer (to hope), lever (to lift), répéter (to repeat).

Type 4: appeler-type (double the consonant)

Same idea as type 3 — open up that weak e to a real "eh" — but instead of adding an accent, these verbs double the consonant (l or t):

Also: jeter (to throw) → je jette; s'appeler (to be named) → je m'appelle (you've been saying this since Lesson 1).

One-table summary

Part 4: Asking a question by intonation

The simplest way to ask a yes/no question in French — and by far the most common in everyday speech — is to just raise your voice at the end of a statement. Same word order. In writing, you slap on a question mark.

Two other ways to ask questions — Est-ce que tu parles…? and the inverted Parles-tu…? — come in Lesson 8. For now, intonation only. It's what real French people do most of the time.

Typographic detail! Before ? (and !, :, ;) French puts a space: write Tu parles ?, not Tu parles?. It's a real orthographic rule, not just casual style.

Part 5: Impersonal on — the spoken-French shortcut

In conversation, the French almost always use on instead of nous. It conjugates like il / elle (third-person singular), but it usually means "we":

• Nous mangeons (writing, formal) = On mange (everyday speech) — "we eat / we're eating"
• On parle français ici. — "French is spoken here" (generic one)
• On y va ? — "Shall we go?"

Lifehack: if you're not sure how to conjugate nous for some verb, say on and use the 3rd-person-singular form. Almost always safe in conversation. The full nous form is for writing and slightly formal speech.

This is similar to English one (one doesn't say that), but where English one sounds stiff, French on is the default in everyday talk.