Partir — to leave | French Verb Chart

🇬🇧 Partir in plain English: leaving, properly

Partir — to leave, to depart — conjugates on the sortir pattern: je pars, tu pars, il part, nous partons, vous partez, ils partent, with the passé composé firmly on être: « je suis parti(e) », participle agreeing. Futur je partirai, imparfait je partais, subjonctif que je parte — a tidy table whose real difficulty lives outside it: French has THREE leave verbs and refuses to let them substitute. Partir leaves intransitively (you just go: je pars demain); quitter leaves SOMETHING or someone (j’ai quitté Paris, elle l’a quitté — with avoir); laisser leaves something BEHIND (j’ai laissé mes clés). Pick by what follows the verb: nothing → partir, a place/person → quitter, an object abandoned → laisser.

The bonus structure every timetable reads: à partir de — “from / starting from” — « à partir de lundi » (from Monday), partir conjugating time itself. Travel French leans on the whole family: « le train part à 14h » (schedules use partir, not sortir), « on part en vacances » (leaving on holiday — the happiest sentence in the language), and the farewell « j’y vais, je pars ! » stacking two leaving verbs for emphasis. Drill: announce three departures — one future (je partirai), one habitual past (je partais tous les étés), one accomplished (je suis parti à midi) — and the leaving verb will never leave you.