Put « naître » into the past — the big A2 step.
At A2 you move « naître » into the past — and French gives you two past tenses where English often uses one. This trips up every learner, so let’s be very concrete: the passé composé is for what happened (one completed event: « hier, j’ai… »), the imparfait is for how things were (background, habit, description: « quand j’étais petit, je …ais »).
Think of a film: the imparfait is the scenery and the mood; the passé composé is what the actors do. Every French story you ever tell will weave these two together — the step-by-step method below shows you how each one is built for this verb, then you practise both.
💡 Focus at this level: Past & imparfait
Passé composé = être (not avoir!) + the participle né: « je suis né(e) ». « naître » belongs to the small être-family of movement/change verbs.
Because the auxiliary is être, the participle agrees: elle est née, ils sont nés. Say the feminine form aloud — for some verbs you can hear the difference.
Full list of être verbs → Les Verbes avec Être
Imparfait recipe: take nous naissons, drop -ons → stem naiss-, add the endings.
⚠️ Classic mistake: passé composé = one completed event (hier, j’ai…) ; imparfait = background, habit, description (avant, je …ais). Movie trick: imparfait sets the scene, passé composé is the action.
🧠 Memory hook: one story a day: tell yesterday in 3 sentences — 2 passé composé + 1 imparfait, using « naître » at least once.
Tap 🔊 to hear each form in a native voice, then say it aloud — most French verb endings are silent, so « naître » forms often sound alike.
je ___ (passé composé)
suis né(e)
tu ___ (passé composé)
es né(e)
il ___ (passé composé)
est né
je ___ (imparfait)
naissais
tu ___ (imparfait)
naissais
il ___ (imparfait)
naissait
🎮 Conjugation quiz match the person to the form
🧩 Sentence builder put the words in the right order