Past Participle Agreement with Être

1. The Golden Rule of Agreement with être

Let's start by formalizing the rule we introduced last time. When a verb is conjugated in the passé composé with the auxiliary être, its past participle acts like an adjective and must agree in gender (masculine/feminine) and number (singular/plural) with the subject of the sentence.

This webpage provides a very clear explanation and a helpful summary table.

As you've just read, the endings for the past participle are adjusted as follows:

This infographic provides a great visual summary of the entire passé composé, but I want you to focus on the être side.

2. Seeing Agreement in Action

Now let's see and hear how this works in practice. The video we watched in the last lesson has an excellent section where the instructor conjugates a verb fully, explaining the agreement for each subject pronoun.

Special Cases: nous and vous

As you saw in the video and the Kwiziq article, you have to be careful with nous and vous.

• nous (we): Can be a group of men, a mixed group (masculine plural –s), or a group of women (feminine plural –es).
  • Nous (Marc et moi) sommes arrivé**s**.
  • Nous (Marie et moi) sommes arrivé**es**.
• vous (you): This is especially important for your goal of working in customer service.
  • If you are speaking to one person formally (e.g., a client):
    • Monsieur, vous êtes né en quelle année ? (formal, to a man)
    • Madame, vous êtes arrivé**e** à quelle heure ? (formal, to a woman)
  • If you are speaking to a group of people:
    • Vous êtes parti**s** trop tôt. (to a group of men/mixed)
    • Vous êtes entré**es** par la mauvaise porte. (to a group of women)

3. A Huge Category: Agreement with Pronominal Verbs

The agreement rule doesn't just apply to the "Dr. Mrs. Vandertramp" verbs. It also applies to all pronominal verbs (also called reflexive verbs). These are verbs that have se or s' before them in the infinitive, like se lever (to get up), se laver (to wash oneself), or s'appeler (to be called).

The great news is that the rule is the same: Pronominal verbs ALWAYS use être in the passé composé, and the past participle ALWAYS agrees with the subject.

The video below gives a fantastic explanation.

Let's break down the structure for a verb like se lever (to get up):

This is a very common structure in French for talking about daily routines. For example: Hier, je me suis levé à 7h, et ensuite je me suis préparé pour le travail. (Yesterday, I got up at 7am, and then I got ready for work.)

Conclusion

Excellent work today! You have now mastered one of the most important (and sometimes tricky) rules of French grammar. Getting this right is a sign of a truly solid foundation.

Key Takeaways:

• When using the auxiliary être in the passé composé, the past participle must agree in gender and number with the subject.
• The agreement endings are: -e for feminine singular, -s for masculine plural, and -es for feminine plural.
• This rule applies to the "verbs of movement/state" (the Vandertramp list) and to all pronominal verbs (like se lever, s'habiller).
• Pay special attention to vous to ensure you are being polite and grammatically correct in a professional setting.

In our next lesson, we will put all this together. You will practice constructing sentences to describe completed actions in the past, using both avoir and être verbs and answering questions about past activities.

À bientôt