Prendre — to take | French Verb Chart

🇬🇧 Reading the prendre tables: one verb, a whole family

Prendre — to take — anchors one of the great irregular verbs of French, and le verbe prendre hides its trap in the plural: je prends, tu prends, il prend (regular-looking so far), then nous prenons, vous prenez, ils prennent — one n, one n, two n’s, with three different vowel sounds. To conjugate prendre correctly is mostly to master that three-way split; say the present aloud down the column and the pattern installs itself faster than any rule. The rest of la conjugaison is friendlier: passé composé j’ai pris (avoir + the short participle pris), imparfait je prenais from the nous-stem, futur je prendrai on the intact infinitive, conditionnel je prendrais, and the subjonctif que je prenne doubling the n like the ils-form — exactly the ils-stem rule from our subjunctive guide. À l’indicatif comme au subjonctif, prendre rewards pattern-reading over memorising: every irregularity above repeats across its family.

And what a family: apprendre (learn), comprendre (understand), entreprendre (undertake), reprendre (take back / resume), surprendre, and the delicious se méprendre (to be mistaken) all conjugate identically — j’apprends, nous comprenons, ils surprennent, j’ai entrepris. In french grammar terms you’re not learning a verb, you’re learning a conjugator that outputs seven. Prendre also runs daily-life French the way faire runs weather: prendre le train, prendre une décision, prendre le temps — the phrase engine of transport, meals (je vais prendre…) and plans. Master this one table with the audio above, check yourself with the games below, and an outsized slice of everyday communication conjugates itself — no online language courses subscription required, just the nous/ils vowel drill and a week of saying what you take, learn and understand.