Venir — to come | French Verb Chart

🇬🇧 Venir in plain English: the verb that tells the recent past

Venir — “to come” — is an irregular verb with three personalities worth mastering in order. First, the present: je viens, tu viens, il vient, nous venons, vous venez, ils viennent — note the vowel flip (ie/e/ie) that makes this conjugation a pronunciation drill as much as a grammar one; each pronoun’s form must be learned by ear, and the conjugation tables above are best read aloud. Second, the passé composé takes être: « je suis venu(e) », participle agreeing with the subject — venir sits firmly in the movement-verb family, never avoir. Third — the special power: venir de + infinitive is the French recent past: « je viens de manger » = I just ate. Where English says “just”, French conjugates venir; no other structure buys you so much natural fluency for one pattern. The future and conditional run on the irregular stem viendr- (je viendrai, je viendrais), the imperative is simply viens ! / venez !, and the present subjunctive — que je vienne — earns its place in everyday speech after il faut que and avant que. (If you’ve studied Spanish: the Spanish verb venir is this verb’s cousin, similar irregularity, different music — French speakers never roll the r.)

The family multiplies the value of every form you memorize: revenir (come back), devenir (become — also être in the past: elle est devenue), se souvenir (remember), prévenir (warn — but avoir!) all conjugate exactly like venir. Learn one table, own five verbs — the best grammar bargain in the language, and the reason venir belongs in your first ten verbs. Test your knowledge with the games below; the translation reflex worth drilling until automatic is the recent past: anything you just did, say with viens de.