Savoir — to know (a fact) | French Verb Chart

🇬🇧 Savoir in plain English — and the connaître question

French splits “to know” between two verbs, and choosing correctly matters more than any single form in the tables above. Savoir is knowledge of facts and skills: je sais que… (I know that…), je sais nager (I know how to swim — savoir + infinitive needs no “how”). Connaître is familiarity: people, places, works — je connais Marie, je connais Paris. The rule that decides every case: if you can know it by heart or by doing, savoir; if you know someone or know OF something through acquaintance, connaître. « Je sais Marie » is impossible; « je connais que… » equally so — two verbs, zero overlap, and the difference is the first thing French teachers test because English hides it inside one word.

The conjugation of this irregular verb rewards attention at four spots. Present: je sais, tu sais, il sait — but nous savons, ils savent (the stem flips mid-table). Futur and conditionnel run on saur-: je saurai, je saurais. The subjunctive is sache — que je sache — and uniquely, savoir keeps subjunctive forms as imperatives: sache / sachez (« sachez que… » — know that… — the formal announcement-opener of every French administration letter). And the passé composé « j’ai su » shifts meaning: not “I knew” but “I found out” — j’ai su la vérité hier = the truth reached me yesterday; for ongoing past knowledge French uses the imperfect je savais. That aspect shift (compound tenses turning states into events) is one of the french language’s neatest structures, and savoir is where learners meet it first. In context, drill the pair: je savais (I knew) vs j’ai su (I learned of) — plus one polite gem for conversation: « je ne saurais pas vous dire » — I couldn’t say — the conditional as courtesy.