Subject-Verb Agreement

French verbs agree with their subject in person (1st, 2nd, 3rd) and number (singular, plural). On paper this gives every verb six distinct endings; in spoken French many of those endings collapse into the same sound. Subject-verb agreement is therefore a phenomenon that lives mostly on the page — yet getting it wrong in writing is the single fastest way to mark yourself as a non-native, even when the spoken form would be identical.

The six endings, and why most of them sound the same

Take parler in the present indicative:

Four of the six forms are pronounced identically. Only nous (-ons) and vous (-ez) sound different. This means the subject pronoun, not the verb ending, carries the work of telling listeners who is doing the action. That's the deeper reason French requires subject pronouns where Spanish and Italian don't: drop the pronoun and the listener can no longer tell first person from third.

In speech, je parle and ils parlent are distinguished only by je vs ils. In writing, the -nt on parlent is a mandatory agreement marker, and forgetting it is a clear grammatical error.

What the nous and vous forms tell you

When you do hear a difference, it's because the ending contains a vowel. The nous form ends in -ons /ɔ̃/ across almost every tense and verb (nous parlons, nous finissons, nous prenons, nous étions, nous aurons). The vous form ends in -ez /e/ for most verbs (vous parlez, vous finissez, vous prenez), with the predictable exception of three verbs that take -tes instead: vous êtes, vous faites, vous dites.

These three forms are the only places where 2nd-person plural drops the -ez ending, and they are among the most-used forms in the language. Memorize them as a unit.

Vous as formal singular: the polite "you"

When you address one person formally — a stranger, an older person, a customer, a boss — French uses vous with the 2nd-person plural verb form. This is not optional or cosmetic; the verb really does inflect as plural even when you mean a single person.

This creates a famous adjective-agreement question: when vous refers to one masculine person, do adjectives and participles agree as singular or as plural? The answer is singular, because semantically the subject is one person:

The verb stays plural in all three cases (vous êtes), but the participle/adjective tracks the real referent. This distinction is one of the cleanest tests for whether a learner has internalized the formal-vs-plural split.

On: grammatically singular, semantically slippery

The pronoun on is one of the most useful words in spoken French. It takes a 3rd-person singular verb (on parle, on mange, on est), but its meaning ranges across:

• "we" (informal) — replacing nous in conversational speech: on y va = "let's go."
• "one / people in general" — impersonal: en France, on mange à midi = "in France, people eat at noon."
• "someone" — anonymous agent: on a sonné à la porte = "someone rang the doorbell."

The verb is always 3sg, but when on clearly means "we" the adjective and participle agree semantically — masculine plural, or feminine plural if the group is all women:

This is one of the few places in French where written agreement reflects meaning rather than the grammatical form of the subject. It is universally accepted in modern usage.

Compound subjects: when two singulars become plural

When two or more subjects are joined by et, the verb is plural:

When subjects are joined by ou (or ni... ni), the verb is usually singular if the choice is genuinely exclusive — only one of them will be the subject:

If the ou is closer to "and/or" — both are possible, both might do it — plural agreement is also accepted. With ni... ni the same logic applies: Ni Paul ni Marie ne viendra (only one possibility, singular) or Ni Paul ni Marie ne viennent jamais (both equally relevant, plural).

When subjects are of mixed person, the verb agrees with the highest-priority person on this hierarchy: 1st > 2nd > 3rd. So toi et moi (you and I) takes the nous form; toi et elle (you and her) takes the vous form:

The duplicating pronoun (nous, vous) is often used out loud to make the agreement audible — French speakers feel its absence as awkward.

Collective nouns: usually singular, sometimes plural

A collective noun (la famille, le gouvernement, l'équipe, la foule, la majorité) takes a singular verb:

The construction la plupart de + plural noun is the well-known exception: it agrees with the embedded plural, not with la plupart.

Similar partitives — beaucoup de, peu de, la moitié de, un grand nombre de — also typically agree with the embedded plural noun rather than with the partitive itself.

Il y a: invariable for number

The presentational construction il y a ("there is/are") is grammatically frozen as singular. It never changes form, no matter what follows:

English speakers often try to match number ("there are three hundred people") and write il y ont — that form does not exist.

Inversion in formal questions

When you invert a subject pronoun and verb to form a question, the subject pronoun is hyphenated to the verb: Parles-tu français ? The agreement rules don't change — the verb still agrees with the subject — but two phonetic adjustments are mandatory:

• If the verb ends in a vowel and the subject begins with a vowel (il, elle, on), insert -t- between them: Parle-t-il français ? / A-t-elle compris ? / Mange-t-on à quelle heure ?
• The 1st-person singular inversion is only used with a small set of verbs in formal style: suis-je, ai-je, dois-je, puis-je, vais-je. For other verbs, French uses est-ce que instead — Est-ce que je parle trop fort ?, never Parle-je trop fort ?

In casual speech, inversion is rare — the typical question forms are intonation (tu parles français ?) or est-ce que (est-ce que tu parles français ?). Inversion belongs to formal writing and polite speech.

Comparison with English

English subject-verb agreement is much simpler: only the third-person singular adds -s in the present (I work / he works). Every other person uses the bare form. As a result, English speakers underestimate how much agreement French requires and tend to forget the silent endings in writing — parles, parlez, parlent all sound identical, but each has a distinct written form that must match its subject.

Two specific transfer errors recur:

1. Treating vous as syntactically singular when it refers to one person. English "you" is morphologically invariable, so learners write vous est or pair vous with a singular adjective: vous êtes prêt-e must inflect for the real referent's gender, but the verb is always plural.

2. Forgetting silent endings entirely in writing. Les enfants joue dans le jardin sounds correct because joue and jouent are pronounced identically, but the written -nt is mandatory.

A useful drill: whenever you write a verb, ask "what is the subject, and is it 1st, 2nd, or 3rd person?" — and read the agreement aloud in your head. Even though the ending is silent, going through the agreement step protects against silent-ending omission.

Common Mistakes

Key takeaways

• Most agreement is silent in speech; in writing it is non-negotiable.
• Only nous (-ons) and vous (-ez) endings are reliably audible.
• Vous always takes 2nd-person plural verb form, even when addressing one person.
• On is grammatically 3sg but its participles and adjectives can agree semantically when on means "we."
• Compound subjects with et take plural verbs and follow the 1>2>3 person hierarchy.
• Il y a never changes form for number.
• Formal inversion requires -t- between a vowel-final verb and il/elle/on.