The verb arriver has two lives in French. In its first life it is a motion verb — je suis arrivé à Paris, le train arrive à 16h, elle arrive demain. In its second life it is an impersonal verb of events: things happen, and they happen to someone. Il m'est arrivé une chose étrange — "something strange happened to me." Qu'est-ce qu'il t'arrive ? — "what's happening to you / what's wrong?" Il leur arrive de partir tôt — "they sometimes leave early." The two uses share a verb but almost nothing else: the motion verb has a real subject (the person or thing arriving), while the event verb has the dummy il and a postposed real subject, with an indirect-object experiencer marking the affected person.
This page covers the second use — arriver as an impersonal verb of events. It walks through the dummy-il construction with and without an indirect object, the highly idiomatic il arrive de + infinitive ("sometimes one does X"), the auxiliary être in compound tenses (and the agreement complications it brings), the close partner se passer, and the difference between asking qu'est-ce qui arrive ? and qu'est-ce qu'il y a ? By the end you should be able to read these constructions fluently in conversation and produce them when something — usually something unexpected — happens to someone.
The two arrivers, side by side
Before going further, it is worth seeing the two uses side by side. The same verb form appears, but the grammar around it is different.
| Reading | Subject | Example | Translation |
|---|---|---|---|
| motion verb | real (the arriving entity) | Marie arrive demain. | Marie is arriving tomorrow. |
| motion verb | real | Le train est arrivé en retard. | The train arrived late. |
| impersonal event | dummy il (real subject postposed) | Il arrive des choses étranges. | Strange things happen. |
| impersonal event + IO | dummy il | Il m'arrive des choses étranges. | Strange things happen to me. |
| impersonal "sometimes" | dummy il | Il m'arrive de pleurer en regardant des films. | I sometimes cry watching movies. |
The motion-verb use is covered separately — see Arriver vs rentrer vs retourner. What follows is the impersonal-event family, where il is a dummy subject and the real subject (or de + infinitive) follows the verb.
The dummy-il pattern: things happen
The simplest impersonal use of arriver is without any IO. The dummy il sits in the subject slot, the verb is third-person singular, and the real subject — what is happening — is postposed.
Il arrive parfois des choses bizarres dans cette maison.
Strange things sometimes happen in this house.
Il arrive que la livraison soit en retard, mais c'est rare.
It happens that the delivery is late, but it's rare. ('il arrive que' + subjunctive)
Il est arrivé un accident sur l'autoroute ce matin.
An accident happened on the highway this morning.
The pattern il arrive que + subjunctive is a polished way to say "it sometimes happens that" — slightly literary, common in writing. In speech, parfois + indicative or des fois + indicative is more frequent.
When the real subject is plural, the verb still stays singular — agreement with the dummy il, not with the postposed subject:
Il arrive parfois des situations difficiles à gérer.
Difficult situations sometimes come up. (note: 'arrive' singular, not 'arrivent')
This singular-agreement-with-dummy-il is the standard rule for impersonal verbs (il y a deux personnes, not ils y ont; il faut deux heures, not ils faut deux heures). Arriver in impersonal use follows the same logic.
With an indirect object: things happen to someone
The much more common pattern adds an IO pronoun to mark who the event happens to. The dummy il still occupies the subject slot, and the IO pronoun goes between il and the verb.
DUMMY 'il' + IO PRONOUN (me/te/lui/nous/vous/leur) + arrive + REAL SUBJECT (postposed)Il m'arrive parfois d'oublier mes clés à la maison.
I sometimes forget my keys at home. (lit. 'it sometimes happens to me to forget')
Il leur arrive souvent de se disputer pour des broutilles.
They often argue over trifles. (lit. 'it often happens to them to argue')
Qu'est-ce qu'il t'arrive ? Tu as l'air bouleversé.
What's happening to you? You look upset.
Il nous arrive quelque chose d'incroyable, écoute bien.
Something incredible is happening to us — listen up.
The dative-experiencer logic is the same as in il me plaît, tu me manques, il me faut: the person affected is marked as an indirect object, and the event is the grammatical real subject. French is consistent across this entire family of impersonal verbs.
"Qu'est-ce qu'il t'arrive ?" — the diagnostic question
One of the most useful sentences in this construction is the question form qu'est-ce qu'il t'arrive ? — "what's happening to you / what's wrong?" It is what you ask a friend who looks visibly upset, distracted, or sick.
Qu'est-ce qu'il t'arrive ? Tu n'as pas dit un mot depuis ce matin.
What's wrong? You haven't said a word since this morning.
Qu'est-ce qu'il vous arrive ? Vous semblez bien fatigué.
What's the matter with you? You look really tired.
A close cousin without IO is qu'est-ce qui arrive ? / qu'est-ce qui se passe ? — "what's happening?" — used when no specific person is affected.
Qu'est-ce qui se passe dehors ? J'entends crier.
What's going on outside? I hear shouting.
Qu'est-ce qui arrive si on appuie sur ce bouton ?
What happens if we press this button?
The closest cousin in everyday French is qu'est-ce qu'il y a ? — "what's wrong / what is it?" This is the single most common diagnostic question in conversational French, and it is built on avoir (in il y a, "there is"), not arriver.
— Tu pleures ? — Non, ce n'est rien. — Mais qu'est-ce qu'il y a, dis-moi.
— Are you crying? — No, it's nothing. — But what's wrong, tell me.
In casual speech, qu'est-ce qu'il y a ? and qu'est-ce qu'il t'arrive ? are partly interchangeable for "what's wrong?" — but the arriver version foregrounds an event happening to the person, while qu'est-ce qu'il y a ? is more general (it might be an internal state, a fear, a distraction).
Il m'arrive de + infinitive: "I sometimes do X"
This is one of the most idiomatic and elegant uses of impersonal arriver: il m'arrive de + infinitive means "I sometimes do X," "it happens that I do X," "I have been known to do X." It expresses occasional or sporadic occurrence — not regular habit, but more than rare.
DUMMY 'il' + IO PRONOUN + arrive + de + INFINITIVEIl m'arrive de me lever à 5h pour aller courir avant le travail.
I sometimes get up at 5 to go running before work.
Il lui arrive de chanter sous la douche, mais pas trop fort.
She/he sometimes sings in the shower — not too loudly though.
Il nous arrive de regarder un film en VO le dimanche soir.
We sometimes watch a film in the original language on Sunday evenings.
Il leur arrive de venir nous rendre visite à l'improviste.
They sometimes drop by to visit us unannounced.
The frequency adverbs commonly paired with this construction — parfois, souvent, rarement, de temps en temps — all sit naturally between arrive and de:
Il m'arrive parfois d'oublier où j'ai garé la voiture.
I sometimes forget where I parked the car.
Il lui arrive très rarement de dire un gros mot.
He/she very rarely uses a swear word.
Il nous arrive souvent de manger sur le pouce le midi.
We often grab a quick bite at lunchtime.
This is a more elegant construction than parfois je + verb; native speakers reach for il m'arrive de when they want to convey that the action is occasional but not exceptional. It is the grammatical engine behind a lot of polished spoken French.
Compound tenses: il m'est arrivé
Arriver takes the auxiliary être in compound tenses, both in its motion-verb use (je suis arrivé à Paris) and in its impersonal use (il m'est arrivé une chose étrange). The auxiliary follows the dummy il, the IO sits before est, and the past participle is arrivé.
DUMMY 'il' + IO PRONOUN + est + arrivé + REAL SUBJECTIl m'est arrivé une histoire incroyable à l'aéroport ce matin.
An incredible thing happened to me at the airport this morning.
Il leur est arrivé un petit accident, mais tout va bien maintenant.
A small accident happened to them, but everything's fine now.
Il vous est déjà arrivé d'oublier votre propre anniversaire ?
Have you ever forgotten your own birthday? (lit. 'has it ever happened to you to forget')
Past participle agreement
This is where things get subtle. The past participle of arriver with être normally agrees with the subject — Marie est arrivée (feminine), les enfants sont arrivés (masculine plural). In the impersonal use, the grammatical subject is the dummy il — masculine singular by default — so the participle stays arrivé (no agreement) regardless of the postposed real subject.
Il m'est arrivé une chose étrange.
A strange thing happened to me. (participle stays 'arrivé' — agrees with dummy il, not with 'une chose')
Il est arrivé des nouvelles importantes ce matin.
Important news arrived this morning. (still 'arrivé' — not 'arrivées')
This is one of the cleanest examples in French of the asymmetry between dummy-il sentences and personal sentences. Compare:
Une chose étrange m'est arrivée.
A strange thing happened to me. (now 'une chose' is the real grammatical subject — feminine — so participle agrees: arrivée)
Des nouvelles importantes sont arrivées ce matin.
Important news arrived this morning. (real subject 'des nouvelles' — feminine plural — agreement: arrivées)
The two French sentences mean the same thing, but they differ in syntactic packaging. The impersonal version foregrounds the event ("it happened that..."); the personal version foregrounds the noun. Native speakers use both, depending on the rhythm and emphasis they want.
Imparfait: il m'arrivait de
The imparfait of impersonal arriver — il m'arrivait, il lui arrivait, il leur arrivait — describes habitual or recurring past events. It pairs especially well with de + infinitive to describe what someone used to do occasionally in the past.
Quand j'étais étudiant, il m'arrivait de travailler jusqu'à 3h du matin.
When I was a student, I sometimes worked until 3 in the morning.
Avant de prendre sa retraite, il lui arrivait de voyager pour le travail.
Before he retired, he occasionally traveled for work.
Il leur arrivait de se chamailler pour des bêtises, comme tous les frères.
They sometimes squabbled over silly things, like all brothers.
This is the past tense of an occasional action, parallel to the English I used to sometimes / I would sometimes.
Arriver vs se passer: two ways to say "happen"
French has two main everyday verbs for "happen": arriver and se passer. They overlap, but they are not perfectly interchangeable.
| Verb | Typical use | Connotation |
|---|---|---|
| arriver (à qqn) | "happen to" — emphasis on the experiencer | often unexpected, often involving someone specific |
| se passer | "happen, take place" | more neutral, often about events without a specific affected person |
Se passer is reflexive — que se passe-t-il ? (what's happening?), quelque chose s'est passé (something happened). It tends to describe events as occurring in a context, without necessarily targeting a specific person.
Que se passe-t-il dans la rue ? J'entends des sirènes.
What's happening in the street? I hear sirens. (event in a context — not affecting me directly)
Que s'est-il passé à la réunion ce matin ?
What happened at the meeting this morning?
Arriver with an IO foregrounds the affected person:
Il m'est arrivé quelque chose en sortant du bureau.
Something happened to me on the way out of the office.
Qu'est-ce qu'il lui est arrivé ?
What happened to him/her? (specifically — what befell this person)
In short: se passer describes events; arriver à describes events in their relation to a specific person. Both are common, both are correct, and native speakers shift between them naturally.
— Tu as l'air pâle. — Oui, il m'est arrivé un truc bizarre dans le métro.
— You look pale. — Yeah, something weird happened to me on the subway. (arriver foregrounds 'me')
— On dirait qu'il y a du monde dehors. — Je ne sais pas ce qui se passe.
— Looks like there's a crowd outside. — I don't know what's going on. (se passer for the general scene)
Other related uses of arriver
There are two more common arriver idioms worth flagging — they are not impersonal-event uses but are easy to confuse with them.
Arriver à + infinitive = "manage to"
Arriver à + infinitive means "to manage to" or "to succeed in." The subject is real (the person managing), and the à introduces the infinitive.
J'arrive à comprendre quand il parle lentement, mais sinon c'est dur.
I can understand when he speaks slowly, but otherwise it's hard.
On n'arrive pas à ouvrir cette boîte.
We can't manage to open this box.
This is grammatically distinct from impersonal arriver à qqn — here the subject is real, the à introduces an infinitive, and there is no dummy il.
En arriver à = "to reach the point of"
A more abstract idiom: en arriver à + noun or infinitive means "to reach the point of," "to get to the stage of." Used for unexpected developments or critical thresholds.
On en est arrivés à devoir fermer le restaurant trois jours par semaine.
We've reached the point of having to close the restaurant three days a week.
Comment en êtes-vous arrivés là ?
How did you get to that point?
This is more of an idiom than a grammar pattern, but native speakers use it constantly when telling a story about how a situation developed.
Common Mistakes
Mistake 1: Trying to make the experiencer the subject.
❌ Je arrive quelque chose d'étrange.
Wrong: in the impersonal-event use, the dummy 'il' must occupy the subject slot. The experiencer is an IO. 'Il m'arrive quelque chose d'étrange.'
✅ Il m'arrive quelque chose d'étrange.
Something strange is happening to me.
Mistake 2: Agreeing the past participle with the postposed real subject.
❌ Il m'est arrivée une chose étrange.
Wrong: with the dummy il, the participle stays 'arrivé' regardless of the gender/number of the postposed subject. To get agreement, restructure: 'Une chose étrange m'est arrivée.'
✅ Il m'est arrivé une chose étrange.
A strange thing happened to me. (impersonal — no agreement)
✅ Une chose étrange m'est arrivée.
A strange thing happened to me. (personal — agreement with 'une chose')
Mistake 3: Using avoir instead of être in compound tenses.
❌ Il m'a arrivé un truc bizarre.
Wrong auxiliary: arriver always takes être, including in impersonal use. 'Il m'est arrivé un truc bizarre.'
✅ Il m'est arrivé un truc bizarre.
A weird thing happened to me.
This is a frequent error because the impersonal construction can feel grammatically distant from the motion-verb use that students first learn with être (je suis arrivé). The auxiliary is invariant: always être.
Mistake 4: Forgetting de before the infinitive.
❌ Il m'arrive oublier mes clés.
Wrong: 'il m'arrive' + infinitive requires 'de' as a connector. 'Il m'arrive d'oublier mes clés.'
✅ Il m'arrive d'oublier mes clés.
I sometimes forget my keys.
The de is mandatory before the infinitive in this construction. Without it, the sentence is ungrammatical.
Mistake 5: Confusing impersonal arriver with motion-verb arriver.
❌ Marie arrive un accident.
Word salad: this mixes the motion verb (Marie arrives) with what would need to be impersonal (an accident happens). The two cannot coexist with one subject. Use 'il est arrivé un accident à Marie.'
✅ Il est arrivé un accident à Marie.
An accident happened to Marie.
✅ Un accident est arrivé à Marie.
An accident happened to Marie. (personal restructuring — accident as subject)
✅ Il lui est arrivé un accident.
An accident happened to her.
Mistake 6: Using qu'est-ce qui arrive ? when qu'est-ce qu'il y a ? would feel more natural.
❌ Qu'est-ce qui t'arrive ? — to a friend you've just met for coffee
Sounds dramatic — implies something must have happened. For a casual 'what's up,' 'ça va ?' or 'quoi de neuf ?' is more natural.
✅ Qu'est-ce qu'il t'arrive ? — to a friend who looks upset
What's wrong? (right context — concern about visible distress)
✅ Ça va ? Quoi de neuf ?
How are you? What's new? (casual greeting)
Qu'est-ce qu'il t'arrive ? is reserved for moments where you sense something is wrong or unusual. As a generic greeting, it is too charged.
Mistake 7: Confusing il arrive que (impersonal subjunctive trigger) with arriver à (manage to).
✅ Il arrive que les clients soient mécontents.
It happens that customers are dissatisfied. ('il arrive que' + subjunctive — impersonal)
✅ Il arrive à comprendre la grammaire française.
He manages to understand French grammar. (arriver à + inf — personal subject)
Two different constructions, two different syntactic shapes. Il arrive que takes a subjunctive clause; arriver à takes an infinitive.
Key takeaways
- Arriver has two distinct uses: a motion verb (Marie arrives) and an impersonal verb of events (something happens to someone).
- The impersonal use follows the dative-experiencer pattern: dummy il
- IO pronoun + arrive
- real subject. Il m'arrive quelque chose — "something is happening to me."
- IO pronoun + arrive
- The most idiomatic construction is il m'arrive de
- infinitive — "I sometimes do X." Pair it with frequency adverbs (parfois, souvent, rarement).
- Compound tenses use être as auxiliary. The participle stays arrivé (no agreement) when the dummy il is the grammatical subject — even if the postposed real subject is feminine or plural.
- Qu'est-ce qu'il t'arrive ? is the diagnostic question for "what's wrong / what's happening to you." For general "what's going on," use qu'est-ce qui se passe ? or qu'est-ce qu'il y a ?
- Se passer describes events in a context (more neutral); arriver à describes events in relation to a specific person (foregrounds the experiencer). Both are correct; native speakers switch between them.
- Don't confuse impersonal arriver à qqn ("happen to someone") with the personal arriver à + inf ("manage to") or en arriver à ("reach the point of"). Three different constructions sharing the same verb.
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