Regular vs Irregular Verbs

When French textbooks talk about "regular" verbs, they mean something very specific: a verb whose stem stays the same across the whole conjugation and whose endings follow a fixed template. By that definition, there are exactly two regular classes — the 1er groupe (infinitives in -er, like parler) and the 2e groupe (infinitives in -ir that show -iss- in their plural forms, like finir). Every other French verb belongs to the 3e groupe, which is the linguistic equivalent of a junk drawer: each verb in it has its own pattern, and you have to learn them one by one.

This page sets out the boundary between regular and irregular and, just as importantly, explains a class of changes that look irregular but really aren't: the predictable spelling adjustments inside the 1er groupe. Verbs like manger, commencer, appeler, acheter, and espérer keep their stems intact phonetically — they only change their spelling so the pronunciation stays consistent. That distinction matters because it tells you what to memorize and what to predict.

The two regular classes

The 1er groupe contains roughly 90 percent of all French verbs and is the only class that is still productive — when French borrows a new verb, it joins the -er group automatically. Recent additions like googler, tweeter, scroller, liker, ghoster, and spoiler all conjugate exactly like parler. If you encounter a verb you've never seen before and it ends in -er, you can predict its conjugation with near-total confidence. The lone -er-group exception is aller, which is wildly irregular and is treated as a 3e-groupe verb in everything but appearance.

The 2e groupe is much smaller — about 300 verbs — but every single one of them follows the same template. The defining feature is the -iss- infix that appears in the plural present (finissons, finissez, finissent) and throughout the entire imparfait (finissais, finissais, finissait...). Verbs of this group include choisir, réussir, grandir, rougir, obéir, applaudir, and many adjective-derived verbs like blanchir (to whiten) and vieillir (to grow old). When you see -ir on an infinitive and -iss- in the plural, you are looking at a regular verb.

The other -ir verbs — partir, sortir, dormir, courir, mourir, ouvrir, offrir, venir, tenir — do not show -iss- and belong to the 3e groupe. Compare:

The presence or absence of -iss- in nous form is the single fastest test for telling a 2e-groupe verb from a 3e-groupe -ir verb.

What "irregular" actually means

A verb is irregular in French when one or more of the following is true:

• the stem changes between persons (je peux / nous pouvons, je veux / nous voulons, je viens / nous venons)
• the endings deviate from the standard set (tu es, not tu ès or tu êtes; ils ont, not ils avent)
• the participe passé does not follow the predictable pattern (pris, not prendu; écrit, not écrivu)

The 3e groupe is where these idiosyncrasies live. It contains all of French's highest-frequency verbs — être, avoir, aller, faire, dire, prendre, mettre, voir, savoir, pouvoir, vouloir, devoir, venir, tenir — and almost every verb you'll use a hundred times a day belongs to it. There is no shortcut: high-frequency irregular verbs have to be learned one by one.

The good news is that 3e-groupe irregularity is rarely random. Verbs cluster into families that share a template:

• -prendre family (prendre, apprendre, comprendre, surprendre): all conjugate identically.
• -mettre family (mettre, permettre, promettre, soumettre, transmettre): all share the same shape.
• -venir / -tenir family (venir, devenir, revenir, tenir, retenir, contenir, obtenir, soutenir): one template covers them all.
• -duire family (conduire, produire, traduire, réduire, séduire, introduire): one template again.
• -aindre / -eindre / -oindre family (craindre, plaindre, peindre, éteindre, joindre): same endings, with a predictable nasal-vowel-to-palatal-nasal shift before vowel-initial endings (je crains /kʁɛ̃/ but nous craignons /kʁɛɲɔ̃/, with /ɲ/ as in Spanish ñ).

Learn the head of each family and the rest come almost free.

The trap in the middle: spelling-driven shifts in 1er-groupe verbs

Here is where many learners — and many bad textbooks — get confused. Several -er verbs change their spelling in certain forms. They are still regular: their pronunciation is faithful to a single underlying stem, and the spelling shifts exist precisely to preserve that pronunciation under French orthographic rules. Calling these verbs irregular is a mistake. Knowing the rules lets you predict every form.

-ger verbs: insert an e before a and o

In French spelling, the letter ⟨g⟩ is pronounced /ʒ/ before e and i, but /g/ before a, o, u. To keep the soft /ʒ/ sound of manger in the nous form, French inserts a silent e: nous mangeons, not nous mangons (which would be pronounced /mɑ̃gɔ̃/). The same logic applies in the imparfait: je mangeais, tu mangeais...

Other common -ger verbs: voyager, ranger, changer, partager, plonger, juger, songer, mélanger, déranger, neiger.

-cer verbs: change c to ç before a and o

Symmetrical to -ger. The letter ⟨c⟩ is pronounced /s/ before e, i, but /k/ before a, o, u. To keep the soft /s/ in commencer, French uses the cédille: nous commençons, je commençais.

Other common -cer verbs: avancer, lancer, placer, prononcer, annoncer, effacer, remplacer.

-yer verbs: y becomes i before a silent e

Verbs like employer, payer, essuyer, ennuyer change the y of the stem to i when the following ending is silent. So j'emploie, tu emploies, il emploie, ils emploient — but nous employons, vous employez, where the ending is pronounced and the y survives.

For -ayer verbs (payer, essayer, balayer), both spellings are accepted — je paie and je paye are both correct, though paie is more common in everyday writing. For -oyer and -uyer, the i form is mandatory: je nettoie, never je nettoye.

-eler / -eter verbs: usually double the consonant before silent e

Verbs like appeler and jeter double their consonant when the following ending is silent: j'appelle, tu appelles, il appelle, ils appellent; but nous appelons, vous appelez, where the second e is pronounced and the doubling is unnecessary.

A handful of verbs follow a different strategy and use è instead of doubling: acheter (j'achète), geler (il gèle), peler (je pèle), modeler (je modèle), harceler (je harcèle). These behave like the é/è verbs below. The 1990 spelling reform recommends the è approach for all -eler/-eter verbs except appeler, jeter, and their derivatives, but in practice traditional spellings dominate in print.

é → è verbs: shift the accent before silent e

Verbs whose stem contains é (like espérer, préférer, célébrer, considérer, exagérer, répéter) change that é to è before silent endings: j'espère, tu espères, il espère, ils espèrent — but nous espérons, vous espérez, where the next syllable is pronounced and the é stays.

The phonetic logic is the same as for -eler/-eter: when the vowel of the next syllable disappears (becomes a silent e), the stem vowel can no longer rely on it for support and opens to è.

Why these are not "irregular"

Every change in this section is deterministic — given the verb's infinitive and a target ending, you can predict the form without consulting a table. They are not stem changes in any meaningful sense; the stem in manger and mangeons is identical when you read them aloud. The spelling system is doing the work, not the verb. Compare with a genuine 3e-groupe stem change like je peux / nous pouvons, where the stem itself is different and you cannot derive one from the other by spelling rules.

If you have internalized why French uses ç in garçon and not garcon, why guerre takes a u, and why mangeons takes an e, you have already absorbed everything you need to predict the 1er-groupe orthographic shifts. They feel arbitrary only until you see the pronunciation logic underneath.

Comparison with English

English barely has the concept of regular vs irregular conjugation classes — almost every English verb forms its past in -ed, and the irregular set (go/went, see/saw, take/took) is just a memorized list of about 200 verbs. There is no English equivalent of "the verb's stem alternates between persons within a single tense," because English verbs barely inflect for person at all (only third-person singular -s).

This makes the French distinction harder to feel intuitively than it would be for, say, a Spanish or Italian speaker. The mental shift required is: in French, "regular" doesn't just mean "the past tense is predictable"; it means "every form of the verb across all six persons in every tense is derivable from one stem and one set of endings." That is a much stronger claim than English regularity makes, and it explains why irregular verbs feel so much more disruptive in French than in English.

Common Mistakes

Key takeaways

• Only the 1er groupe (-er) and 2e groupe (-ir with -iss-) are fully regular.
• The 3e groupe is irregular by definition; learn its verbs in family clusters when possible.
• Spelling-driven shifts in -ger, -cer, -yer, -eler/-eter, and é-verbs are predictable, not irregular — they exist to keep pronunciation consistent.
• The 2e groupe is recognizable by the -iss- infix in the plural present and throughout the imparfait. If you don't see it, you are not looking at a 2e-groupe verb.