Five common mistakes in the French present tense

1. Mixing up « je suis » and « j’ai »

In French, age, hunger, thirst and fear are expressed with avoir, not with être. You say « j’ai vingt ans », never « je suis vingt ans ». The mistake comes from English and from several other languages, and a native speaker notices it at once.

Short rule: if the sentence describes a bodily feeling or a number of years, try avoir first.

2. Dropping the -s of the second person

« tu parle » does not exist. In the second person singular almost every verb takes an -s: tu parles, tu finis, tu prends. Only tu peux, tu veux and tu vaux take an -x.

3. Pronouncing the -ent ending

In the third person plural, -ent is silent: « ils parlent » sounds exactly like « il parle ». You only hear a difference with irregular verbs, for example « il finit » against « ils finissent ».

4. Treating all -er verbs alike

• Verbs in -ger add an e before the -ons ending: nous mangeons.
• Verbs in -cer take a cedilla: nous commençons.
• Verbs such as acheter and appeler change their stem when spoken: j’achète, j’appelle.

These changes exist to keep the sound of the verb stable across all persons.

5. Using the present where French prefers something else

For an action that started in the past and still goes on, French uses the present with depuis: « j’apprends le français depuis deux ans ». There is no compound tense matching the English present perfect in that use.

Fix these five points and your present tense will be reliable in the vast majority of everyday sentences.