{"id":17158,"date":"2012-11-01T14:39:13","date_gmt":"2012-11-01T13:39:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/?p=17158"},"modified":"2017-10-20T14:29:02","modified_gmt":"2017-10-20T12:29:02","slug":"how-to-easily-understand-the-french-passe-compose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/how-to-easily-understand-the-french-passe-compose\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Easily Understand the French “Pass\u00e9 Compos\u00e9”"},"content":{"rendered":"

We’ll try in today’s post to shed some light on the different uses of a special French grammatical tense<\/strong><\/span> called “le pass\u00e9 compos\u00e9<\/em><\/strong><\/span>” —That way, you won’t be feeling too “tense” about it anymore!<\/p>\n

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Actually, linguists nowadays prefer to speak of a “tiroir verbal<\/em><\/strong>” (literally “verbal drawer”) instead of\u00a0un temps grammatical.<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0And what was called for a while “pr\u00e9t\u00e9rit ind\u00e9fini<\/strong><\/em>” would only later be renamed “pass\u00e9 compos\u00e9<\/strong><\/em>.”<\/p>\n

It is maybe this name change \u00a0that caused the grammatical function of the\u00a0pass\u00e9 compos\u00e9<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0to become less and less clear (even to a great deal of native French speakers!), especially since there also exist other\u00a0temps compos\u00e9s<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0of\u00a0le mode indicatif\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>(the “mode indicatif<\/em><\/strong>” is known as “realis mood<\/strong>” in English.)<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Now, having said that, what’s really important to know about the use of\u00a0le pass\u00e9 compos\u00e9\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>before anything else is that it is\u00a0mainly used for\u00a0le discours\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>(the speech)—in the grammatical sense of the word.<\/p>\n

It expresses events which are completely\u00a0achev\u00e9s\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>(finished)\u00a0at some point in the past with respect to the present.<\/p>\n