Ils ont fait leurs devoirs.
They did their homework.
Il est venu.
He came (and I don't need to say when)
Il vint le lendemain.
He came the day after. (this is the passé simple)
Il venait tous les jours.
He came/used to come every day.
Il était déjà venu.
He had already come.
It should be noted that these examples are making use of all the possible past tenses; not just the plus-que-parfait.
V: Mass Media
V: Part-Time Jobs
Lesson 3.07 - Ancient History
L'histoire de la France jusqu'en 1700.
G: Interrogative Pronouns
G: Passé Simple of Regular Verbs
Unlike English, there is a literary past tense, used when writing formally. This past tense is the passé simple.
It is relatively simple to predict when to use this tense: for every occurrence of the passé composé in conversational French, one simply uses the passé simple in literary French. Note that the passé simple is not a composed tense, and therefore does not have an auxiliary verb like the passé composé does.
Formation
To conjugate in this tense, one finds the stem and appends the following, as according to the table: French Grammar ? Print version ?
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The Simple Past Le passé simple
Subject Ending Conjugated Verb
English
Je
-ai
Je dansai.
I danced.
Tu
-as
Tu dansas.
You danced.
Il
-a
Il dansa.
He danced.
Nous
-âmes
Nous dansâmes.
We danced
Vous
-âtes
Vous dansâtes.
You danced.
Ils
-èrent
Ils dansèrent.
They danced.
Regular Normally-Irregular Verbs
The following verbs are irregular in the present indicative, but are regular in their passé simple stems.
Infinitive Stem
Je...
-ir verbs
dormir dorm
dormis
