Le Présent: Aller (to go)

Aller ("to go") is statistically among the five most-used verbs in spoken French, and morphologically it is the strangest verb in the entire language. It looks like a perfectly ordinary 1^er-groupe verb — its infinitive ends in -er — but the moment you try to conjugate it, it throws away the regular pattern and uses three completely different stems borrowed from three different Latin verbs. Despite its irregularity, it is one of the first verbs every French learner needs, because aller powers two of the most frequent things you do in the language: telling someone where you are going, and forming the futur proche (the "going to" future) that dominates everyday speech.

This page lays out the full present-tense paradigm with pronunciation, explains the three-stem oddity in plain terms, walks through the major uses (motion, greetings, futur proche, clothing-suits-you), and ends with the most common mistakes English speakers make.

The full paradigm

Three stems from three Latin verbs

Most irregular French verbs have one or two alternating stems. Aller has three, and they look so different that learners often suspect they have stumbled on three separate verbs:

• vai- / va- — singular forms (je vais, tu vas, il va)
• all- — nous and vous forms (nous allons, vous allez)
• v- + -ont — third-person plural (ils vont)

The historical reason is straightforward, even if the result is messy. Latin had three different verbs of motion — vadere, ambulare, and ire — and over centuries of sound change, one French paradigm absorbed pieces of all three. Vais, vas, va, vont descend from vadere; allons, allez from a folk-Latin ambulare (literally "to walk around," surviving in English amble); and the future and conditional stems (j'irai, j'irais) descend from ire. The result is a verb where every form is correct, every form is irregular, and there is no single "stem" you can identify.

Liaison in the plural

The nous and vous forms begin with a vowel, so the -s of the pronoun is pronounced as /z/ in liaison:

• nous allons /nu‿zalɔ̃/ — "we go"
• vous allez /vu‿zale/ — "you go"

This liaison is obligatory, not optional. Saying /nu alɔ̃/ without the /z/ sounds wrong to French ears.

The 3pl form ils vont starts with a consonant /v/, so there is no liaison: /il vɔ̃/, never /il‿zvɔ̃/. Watch for the contrast with *ils ont /il‿zɔ̃/ ("they have"), where the /z/ is the only audible signal that distinguishes ils ont from ils sont /il sɔ̃/ ("they are"). For vont, the /v/ does the disambiguating work.

Use 1: Motion — going somewhere

The literal sense of aller is "to go" — to move from one place to another. With a destination, French uses aller + a preposition determined by the type of place:

The preposition chez is particularly useful and has no clean English equivalent. It means "to/at the place of," whether that place is a person's home (chez Marie = at Marie's place) or a professional's premises (chez le coiffeur = at the hairdresser's, chez le dentiste = at the dentist's).

Use 2: Health and well-being — comment ça va ?

Aller is the verb French uses to ask and answer "how are you." Note that this is not être — saying /comment es-tu/ sounds bizarre. The standard exchange uses aller:

• Comment ça va ? — How are you? (informal, very common)
• Comment vas-tu ? — How are you? (informal, slightly more careful)
• Comment allez-vous ? — How are you? (formal or plural)

And the typical answers:

• Ça va. — I'm fine. / OK.
• Ça va bien. — I'm well.
• Ça va mal. — I'm not doing well.
• Ça va, et toi ? — I'm fine, and you?

The construction extends to objects and situations: ça va, ce restaurant ? ("Is that restaurant any good?"), ça ne va pas, cette idée ("That idea isn't going to work").

Use 3: Aller + infinitive — the futur proche

Here is where aller earns its place near the top of the frequency list. French expresses the near future by combining aller with an infinitive — exactly parallel to English "going to":

This is the futur proche, and it dominates spoken French. In casual conversation, it is the default future tense — the morphological futur simple (je mangerai) feels formal or distant by comparison. If you remember only one French future tense, make it this one.

For pronoun position with the futur proche, the pronoun goes before the infinitive, not before aller:

For more on this construction, see the Futur Proche page.

Use 4: Aller bien / aller mal avec — fitting and matching

Aller also appears in talk about whether clothing fits or matches. The construction is [item] + va / vont + [bien/mal] + à [person]:

The same verb covers compatibility between objects: ces chaussures vont bien avec ton sac ("those shoes go well with your bag").

Common phrases with aller

A handful of fixed phrases turn up constantly:

Aller is a maison d'être verb

Important for later: aller takes être (not avoir) as its auxiliary in compound tenses. It is one of the canonical "maison d'être" verbs. The past participle is allé, and it agrees with the subject:

• Je suis allé(e) au cinéma. — I went to the cinema.
• Elles sont allées en Espagne l'été dernier. — They (f.) went to Spain last summer.

This will matter for the passé composé, but only flag it now: when you do reach compound tenses, aller will not behave like parler (which takes avoir). It joins partir, arriver, venir, rester, tomber and a small set of motion verbs that pair with être.

Common Mistakes

Mistake 1: Inserting à into the futur proche.

This is by far the most common English-speaker mistake with aller. English "going to eat" has a to that does not exist in French. The à in je vais à Paris belongs to the destination, not to the construction.

Mistake 2: Treating aller as a regular -er verb.

There is no regular paradigm for aller — it is the only irregular -er verb, and its forms must be memorized.

Mistake 3: Using être for "how are you."

French uses aller for well-being, not être. Comment es-tu asks about your characteristics ("what are you like?"), not your current state.

Mistake 4: Pronoun before aller in the futur proche.

In the futur proche, the pronoun attaches to the infinitive (the main verb), not to the auxiliary aller.

Mistake 5: Forgetting the liaison in nous allons / vous allez.

Mistake 6: Using aller with avoir in compound tenses.

(This anticipates the passé composé — see the dedicated page when you get there.)

Key takeaways

Aller is irregular, high-frequency, and powers the futur proche. The six present forms (vais, vas, va, allons, allez, vont) must be memorized as a unit. Once you have them, you have unlocked: literal motion (je vais à Paris), well-being (ça va bien), the dominant spoken future (je vais manger), and a long list of fixed phrases that appear constantly in conversation. The verb pays back the memorization effort many times over.