Lire — to read | French Verb Chart

🇬🇧 Lire in plain English: the reader’s verb

Lire — to read — is short, irregular and everywhere: je lis, tu lis, il lit, nous lisons, vous lisez, ils lisent. The s-stem carries the imparfait (je lisais) and subjonctif (que je lise); the futur is je lirai; the passé composé, j’ai lu — and lu, like vu, has become its own message: « lu » is what French messaging apps say under a read text, conjugation as user interface. The family: relire (reread — conjugates identically), élire (elect — j’ai élu, the newspaper participle), and their cousin dire shares the -is/-isons shape without sharing the celebrity vous dites problem: vous lisez is regular, mercifully.

Lire is also the best advice hiding inside a conjugation chart: reading in French is the highest-leverage input a learner controls — grammar, vocabulary and spelling arrive together, at your own pace, with every sentence a worked example. Start with what you already love one level easier than feels flattering (children’s classics, BD comics — France’s bande dessinée shelves are a national literature), and conjugate the habit itself: je lis dix minutes par jour, j’ai lu un chapitre, je lirai le suivant. The verb table above teaches lire; the habit teaches French — and « que je lise » (present subjunctive) will one day appear in your own sentence « il faut que je lise davantage », at which point both lessons are complete.