French Compound Tense
In French there are two main groups of tenses: simple tenses and compound tenses. Compound tenses are tenses where the verb is made of two words:
1 - Auxiliary verb (avoir or être) in a specific simple tense (Présent / Futur / Imparfait...)
2 - Past participle of the main verb
For example
- Le Passé Composé = auxiliary in Le Présent + past participle
- Le Plus-que-Parfait = auxiliary in L'Imparfait + past participle
- Le Futur Antérieur = auxiliary in Le Futur + past participle
- Le Conditionnel Passé = auxiliary in Le Conditionnel + past participle
- Le Subjonctif Passé = auxiliary in Le Subjonctif Présent + past participle