Apprentissage - Grammar

French: AQA A Level, topic 4.3.4

The conditional tense is what you “could/would/should/ought to do".

In order to form the conditional tense in French, the first step is to take the stem of the verb that you would use to form the simple future tense.
So for regular verbs, this will be the verb in its infinitive (except for RE verbs, where you need to remove the last E from the infinitive).
For irregular verbs, you will need to start with the irregular stem that you saw when forming the simple future tense.

Parler is a regular ER verb.
We start by taking the stem, which is just the infinitive form.
Let’s say that we want to say in French “He would talk”.
Therefore we need to use the pronoun il.
- So we now have il + parler
We now need to add the conditional ending to the stem of the verb.
We know that this should be +ait to the stem of the verb, looking at the table.
- So now we should have il + parler + ait
  - il parlerait 🡪 he would talk

We have already said that for irregular verbs that we need to use their irregular stem that they have when forming the simple future tense and then add the conditional ending to them in order to form the conditional tense in French.
For example:
- Être = Ser...
- Avoir = Aur...
- Aller = Ir...

I want to say in French “I would be”.
I will find the stem of my verb in the simple future tense first (even though it’s the conditional tense I am going to be using)
The stem I need to start with is ser
I will now look at my conditional tense endings which I am able to add to the irregular stem.
I will need to use Je
- I now have Je + ser
The conditional ending that I need to add to my irregular stem is + ais
- So now I have Je + ser + ais
  - Je serais 🡪 I would be

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