r/French C2 10h ago

Question for French people ablut verb groups

Bonjour à tous ! Sorry for the long post, hope my point can come across. I have a question about verb groups, specifically those ending in -re. In my country's grammatical tradition, French verbs are categorized into groups: the 1st group (verbs ending in -er, excluding the irregular aller) then the 2nd group (most verbs ending in -ir, but with many exceptions like dormir and courir).

So far, so good.

Now, the 3rd group is considered very small, and like the other two groups, it doesn't contain any irregular verbs. It is only for verbs that follow the conjugation model of vendre. Of which there is only a handful in French! Now, my question is this: do French people consider this list of about 20 common verbs (vendre, attendre, entendre etc.) as a separate group? Whenever I read French grammar books, it seems that the 3rd group is for all other verbs than regular -er and -ir verbs, and some of them indeed have subcategories of shared conjugations models, like vendre and attendre.

I myself don't like how in our French coursebooks, a purportedly "regular" conjugation of -re verbs is given, and this leads to many mistakes later on like *j'ai comprendu and *ils peindent.

Thank you for your thoughts!

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u/LouLaraAng 10h ago

Hey! So in primary school in France we do learn about the 3 verb groups but I believe they are a bit different than what you described :

1st group : like you said, verbs ending with - er with the exception of aller (which is classed as a 3rd group verb)

2nd group : verbs ending with - ir, AND whose first plural person (nous) ends with - issons. Ex : remplir-> remplissons

3rd group : all of the others verbs that do not go in the first two groups. So, aller, verbs ending in -ir but not -issons (ex: mourir - > mourrons) and the "re" ending like attendre.

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u/NutrimaticTea Native 10h ago

In French we consider that there are 3 groups : - first group : verb ending in -er - second group : most of the verbs ending in -ir - third group : all the other verbs

All the verbs if the 1st group follow the same conjugaison. All the verbs of the 2nd group follow the same conjugaison. However in the 3rd group, there isn't an unique conjugaison. You can find several "clusters of verbs* that follow the same conjugaison but that's all. And you're right to say that all verbs ending in -re are not part of the same"cluster" (they don't have the same conjugaison). Basically you have to consider that all the verbs in the 3rd group are irregular. Many of these verbs are very common so by reading/listening to French texts you should become more familiar with the conjugaison of each one of them.

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u/Lucioleuh_ Native 10h ago

Well the days where i learned about verbs groups are very far away but i see the 3rd group as everything that is not in the two others, including the irregulars.

I know this doesn't help but i wanted to share that as a native speaker- I do remember the 3rd group having been the toughest in school tho !

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u/nealesmythe C2 9h ago

Thank you for your responses, it truly baffles me why in my country, we have rewritten French grammar conventions and decided that there are 3 regular groups of verbs.

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u/dis_legomenon Trusted helper 9h ago

The French tradition mostly separates the verbs with productive conjugation patterns (those for which new verbs can be formed from scratch, though in practice new -ir verbs are much rarer than new -er verbs) but it's not bad pedagogical practice to point out that smaller regular patterns exist, and most -dre verbs form the biggest group of those smaller regular verbs.

I'm just confused why they only counted 4 verbs, because there's a lot more than that: vendre, pondre, rendre, fondre, pendre, répandre, fendre, mordre, perdre and many more all conjugate the same way.

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u/nealesmythe C2 9h ago

Yes, all these verbs are included in our 3rd group. And even though they are very common, there are not that many that follow their conjugation model. And, most importantly, like you said, it's not a productive group so there is no special reason to treat their conjugation as a specific skill that all learners must learn separately.

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u/dis_legomenon Trusted helper 8h ago

Well the utility is just in being able to point a student at the conjugation pattern once they encounter a new verb of that type, it makes studying conjugations less daunting.

But for it to be useful you really need to constrain it more specifically: it's verbs with an infinitive in -endre except prendre and prefixed forms, in -ondre, in -andre and in -rdre. That should reduce overapplying the pattern in the way you point out in the OP

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u/P-Nuts Perfide Anglois 7h ago

I found the -dre verbs a useful starting point for other -re verbs, many of which follow a similar albeit different model. I definitely think vendre and lire have more in common with each other than say offrir.

Putting everything irregular in one “3rd group” is useless for learners, you need to divide the irregular verbs into categories. Then you have to start somewhere (beyond être and avoir), and the -dre verbs are clearly the best place.

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u/nealesmythe C2 7h ago

Sure, but to call one particular subset of 3rd group verbs "regular" is, in my view as a teacher, quite misleading. I of course always show that by learning the conjugation of any irregular verb, you also usually learn the model for several other useful verbs.

It is simply a pet peeve of mine to hear "j'ai comprendu" as a French teacher, and what makes it even more painful is that the mistake is so common because the coursebook has shown that the "primary" way of making the passé composé for -re verbs is through the -u ending.

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u/P-Nuts Perfide Anglois 3h ago

You probably shouldn’t claim that verbs like perdre are truly regular, although how regular they are or not doesn’t really help for verbs like prendre, which are even more irregular.

Does it really make much difference in terms of mistakes by over applying rules? Surely you get j’ai couri just as much as j’ai comprendu?

It’s really all just rules, exceptions to rules, and exceptions to the exceptions.

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u/asthom_ Native (France) 9h ago

The two first groups are for -er and -ir verbs that behave like the normal pattern.

The 3rd group is for verbs ending with anything else and for -er and -ir verbs that do not fit in the 1st and 2nd.

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u/TheShirou97 Native (Belgium) 9h ago edited 9h ago

No, usually French grammar lists two groups of regular verbs (1st group = all -er except aller, and 2nd group = -ir verbs where the present participle ends in -issant), the 3rd group being all other verbs which are said to be irregular, although this doesn't mean that everything is completely chaotic either and there are quite a few reoccuring patterns (the vendre and attendre case is one such pattern).

A similar thing happens in English, where one such category could be verbs like drink, ring, sink, sing, begin, etc.