S'en aller

Question

Hi, with s'en aller I get the meaning of an action of going away or just gone away, so quite different from the passé composé but,whereas the passé composé is very structured and always uses the same past participle for the verb the s'en aller expression seems to vary eg je m'en vais,tu t'en vas, giving the idea of a present tense action or an imperfect,IE I/you are going away/have just gone away BUT nous nous sommes est allé  and presumably vous vous étes est allé use the past participle of aller. So ,the question is,does this alter the meaning in any way and is it just a grammatical irregularity which has to be learned.?

Cécile Janty-Davies · Accepted Answer

Bonjour John,
In the passé composé you need to keep the 'en' in the conjugation.
You can say both -
Je me suis en allé or je m'en suis allé.
Take a look at the following Larousse page with lots of different tenses conjugated for the verb 's'en aller' -
https://www.larousse.fr/conjugaison/francais/s%27en%20aller/10093#:~:text=S'en%20aller%20aux%20temps,all%C3%A9%20est%20la%20conjugaison%20courante.
 
Bonne Continuation !

John Warren · Answer

Merci Céline,trés utile.