Tip / reminder

Andrew T.C1Kwiziq community member

I know there are lots of exceptions in French! Is there one hiding behind the breaking of the symmetry of taking off two letters and adding one when forming participles (-er > -é, -ir > -i, but -dre > -du, rather than the simpler -re > -u) ?

This question relates to:French lesson "Conjugate regular -er, -ir, -dre verbs (+ avoir) in the pluperfect tense in French (Le Plus-que-Parfait)"

Asked 2 years ago

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CélineKwiziq Native French TeacherCorrect answer

Bonjour Andrew,

I do apologise for the delay in replying to your query.

We decided to display the verb ending -dre, and not to use -re, as in most cases, the rule of replacing the verb ending -re with -u would not work. This includes a lot of common verbs ending in -re (faire, disparaître, boire etc.).

Faire -> faiu fait

boire -> boiu bu

disparaître -> disparaitu disparu

I hope this is helpful.

Bonne journée !

Like01 year ago

Andrew T. asked:

Tip / reminder

I know there are lots of exceptions in French! Is there one hiding behind the breaking of the symmetry of taking off two letters and adding one when forming participles (-er > -é, -ir > -i, but -dre > -du, rather than the simpler -re > -u) ?

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