Avoir: to have — and half the past tense in French.

Présent — the six to memorise

There is no pattern to find here. Avoir is irregular in the way only the most-used verbs in a language get to be, and the six forms simply have to be learnt. The good news is that you will hear them several hundred times a day.

Where French says have and English says be

This is the section worth reading twice. A long list of everyday states that English treats as adjectives — I am hungry, I am cold, I am right — French treats as things you possess. Say je suis faim and you have said “I am hunger”.

One more that earns its keep: il y a, built on the il form, means “there is” and “there are” — both, with no change. Il y a un chat, il y a deux chats. It also does “ago”: il y a trois ans, three years ago.

Passé composé — what avoir builds

Before its own past tense, the more important fact: avoir is the helper for the passé composé of almost every French verb. Take the présent of avoir, add a past participle, and you have the past: j’ai mangé, tu as vu, nous avons fini. Learn this table and you have unlocked the past tense of hundreds of verbs, not one.

Its own past participle is eu — spelled with three letters and pronounced as one sound, roughly “ew”. So “I had” in the completed sense is j’ai eu.

Imparfait — the one you will actually use

For talking about the past, avais is far more common than j’ai eu. The imparfait describes how things were — a state that lasted — and having something is almost always a state.

Futur and conditionnel — one stem, two tenses

The futur stem is aur-, which looks nothing like the infinitive and simply has to be learnt. The reward is that the same stem gives you the conditionnel — the two tenses differ only in the endings hung off it.

Conditionnel — would have

Same aur- stem, the imparfait endings. This is the tense of politeness and hypotheticals: j’aurais besoin d’aide — “I would need some help” — is softer and more courteous than saying you need it outright.

Subjonctif — after il faut que

The subjunctive turns up after expressions of necessity, doubt and emotion, and avoir has one of the two irregular sets you genuinely need: il faut que j’aie — “I need to have”.

The forms are worth a second look because they are so short. Aie, aies and ait are all pronounced the same — a single “eh” — so in speech the whole singular collapses into one sound.

Impératif and plus-que-parfait

The imperative of avoir is borrowed straight from the subjunctive and is genuinely rare — it survives mostly in set phrases like n’ayez pas peur, “don’t be afraid”.

Plus-que-parfait — the past behind the past

Take the imparfait of avoir and add the participle, and you get the step further back: j’avais eu, “I had had”. It is the tense for something that was already finished before the moment you are describing.