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📚 This is the overview. « tenir » is taught level by level — pick your CEFR level below for a full lesson (explanation, pronunciation, exercises & games).
Five phrases with « tenir » — guess before the reveal. Practise with the free games → Open this short as a page — transcript included →
Tenir — to hold, to keep — is venir’s identical twin: je tiens, tu tiens, il tient, nous tenons, vous tenez, ils tiennent; futur je tiendrai, participle tenu — every stem move copied from venir with one crucial difference: tenir takes avoir in the past (j’ai tenu), while venir takes être. Learn the pair as a pair and the -enir system is complete, family included: maintenir (maintain), obtenir (obtain — j’ai obtenu), soutenir (support), retenir (retain/book), appartenir (belong) — all avoir, all tiendr- futures, all doubling the n with the stress like their parent.
Tenir’s genius is idiomatic reach. Tenir à + noun = to care deeply about: « je tiens à toi » — one of French’s quieter declarations of love. Tenir à + infinitive = to insist on: « je tiens à payer ». Se tenir = to behave or to stand: « tiens-toi bien ! » (behave!), « la réunion se tient à 15h » (the meeting is held). And the interjection tiens ! — “here you go / well, well!” — hands things over and expresses surprise a hundred times a day across France. Add « tenir le coup » (hold up under pressure) and « un magasin tenu par… » (a shop kept by…) and this chart quietly holds half of spoken French — venez pour la conjugaison, tenez pour les expressions.
The whole -tenir family (maintenir, obtenir, soutenir, retenir, appartenir) plus twin venir and ITS family — one pattern, a dozen verbs. Only the auxiliary differs: tenir-family takes avoir, venir-family être.
“I care about you / you matter to me” — tenir à as attachment. With an infinitive it becomes insistence: je tiens à venir (I insist on coming).
Handing something: “here”. As surprise: “well, well!”. Doubled — « tiens, tiens… » — it means someone’s been caught being interesting.
future (like viendrai): je ___ (tien+d)
tiendrai
to care about someone = tenir ___ quelqu’un (preposition)
à
Here! (handing over) = ___ ! (imperative)
Tiens
je ___ (Tenir — present)
tiens
tu ___ (Tenir — passé composé)
as tenu
il ___ (Tenir — imperfect)
tenait
nous ___ (Tenir — future)
tiendrons
vous ___ (Tenir — conditional)
tiendriez
Go further: Master the present tense — the full beginner guide.
je tiens, tu tiens, il / elle tient, nous tenons, vous tenez, ils / elles tiennent. Full charts for every tense are above, each form with audio.
tenu — the passé composé is « j’ai tenu ». Tenir uses avoir as its auxiliary verb.
« je tiendrai » — the future stem never changes across persons, only the endings do.
to hold. It is one of the essential French verbs — drill the present first, then the passé composé; those two tenses carry most conversations.
Games built from this exact page — turn what you just read into play:
« tenir » at every CEFR level — the tense, its forms and the mechanic that makes it stick. Practise it with the free games →