You've seen that in compound tenses, such as Le Passé Composé, the majority of verbs use avoir as auxiliary. See for example Conjugate regular -er verbs (+ avoir) in the compound past in French (Le Passé Composé). For those verbs, the past participle remains unchanged.
However, it is different when it comes to verbs using être as the auxiliary in Le Passé Composé, such as the Conjugate coming and going verbs (+ être) in the compound past in French (Le Passé Composé) and Conjugate mourir, naître, décéder, devenir, rester (+ être) in the compound past in French (Le Passé Composé).
Learn how to agree the past participle with être in French
Look at these verbs using être as auxiliary in Le Passé Composé:
Note that when être is used as the auxiliary in compound tenses such as Le Passé Composé, the past participle must always agree in gender and number with the subject of the verb.
The endings follow this pattern:
Masculine | Feminine | |
Singular | --- | -e |
Plural | -s |
-es |
Note that when the group includes men AND women, you will always use the masculine-plural ending -s.
Here are some examples:
ATTENTION: Case of agreement with vous
As you know, the French vous can be used to refer either to more than one person (plural you), or in a polite way to a single person (formal you).
In le Passé Composé of (+ être) verbs, the agreement will depend on which vous is being used:
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