Present to the Past How to speak in the past

J'arrive en retard, comme toujours. C’est aujourd’hui Non! J’arrive en retard, comme toujours!

J'arrive en retard, comme toujours. C’est aujourd’hui: Non! J’arrive en retard, comme toujours!

How do we say this in the past? The past tense we’ll look at today is called the passé composé. Passé is easy. It is almost a cognate and means ______________ Composé is a cognate, like the word “composed” in English. That means it is made up of more than one part. In this case it is two parts. Look at this sentence: I have arrived late. You call “have” the helping verb and “arrived” the past participle.

Je+ suis + arrivé + en retard, comme toujours. Passé Composé There are two “helping” verbs in French, The one that is used with the verb arriver is être. (We’ll look at the other one later.) So, let’s look at the boy who was also late for the bus yesterday. We need the correct form of être and the past participle for arriver. Je + être + past participle for arriver + en retard comme toujours. You already know the form of être. For –er verbs you drop the –er and add é to form the pat participle. So, it is like a math problem adding parts. Je+ suis + arrivé + en retard, comme toujours. It can be hier (yesterday), la semaine passée (last week), as long as it was a specific time in the past.

Passé Composé for a girl (with être) Hier, la semaine passée: a specific time in the past. The helping verb être is sort of like an equal sign =. The subject and the past participle have to agree in gender and number. You already know agreement from studying adjectives. Here is what the girl says: Je (feminine singular) suis arrivée (feminine singular) en retard, comme toujours.

Your turn: Hier _______ __________ ____________ en retard dans la cuisine. Le mois passé __________ _____________ ___________ en retard au bureau.