.png)
French Made Easy
Bite-sized and easy-to-follow French lessons for beginners. Join Mathilde as she teaches you the basics you need to know to kickstart your French learning journey, and ultimately speak French clearly and confidently. Each episode covers topics related to French grammar, French pronunciation, and French vocabulary. At the end of each episode, you can download the lesson's exercises – so you can start practicing what you've learned right away. Head to https://www.mathildekien.com/subscribe-library to subscribe to the free FME (French Made Easy) Exercise Library. 🗝
French Made Easy
223 - 10 Common French -RE Verbs
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
In this lesson, you'll learn 10 common (must-know!) regular French verbs ending in -re, like attendre, vendre, and répondre.
📝 Cheat Sheet, Transcript & Exercise Library: Click here to download the cheat sheet, transcript, and exercise for this episode. It's free!
🪄 Feel like you kind of know French, but can’t actually speak it? Get The French Fluency Gap Guide — your roadmap to the 5 fluency pillars every learner needs. See where you’re on track, where you’re stuck, and what to focus on next. Click here to download it for free! 🤍
My 28-Day Grammar Challenge is coming back 🧩 — one small prompt a day, my personal feedback on your sentences twice a week. When doors open, the waitlist is the only place I'll send the link. Join the waitlist here →
Hello everyone, bonjour à tous! 🖤 Welcome back to the French Made Easy podcast. This is episode 223, numéro deux cent vingt-trois.
In today's episode, I'll share 10 common French verbs ending in -re. And you can pair this lesson with episodes 202 and 206, where I shared 10 regular -er verbs and 10 regular -ir verbs. So if you haven't listened to those yet, I recommend checking them out as well.
Alright, so today we're focusing on regular -re verbs. And by the way, an -re verb is simply a verb that ends with the letters -re in its infinitive form… like vendre (to sell) or attendre (to wait).
Now, here's something that confuses a lot of people. In French, verbs are sorted into three groups. Most -er verbs belong to the first group. Regular -ir verbs, like finir, belong to the second group. And the remaining verbs (including verbs ending in -re) belong to the third group, which is often thought of as the "irregular" group.
But, inside that big third group, there's a little family of -re verbs that all follow the same pattern in the present tense.That’s why I call them regular -re verbs. So you learn that pattern once, and you can use it with all of them. Those are the ones we're learning today.
In this episode, I'll give you 10 regular French -re verbs, with their English translations and an example sentence in the present tense so you can hear it in context.
As usual, before we start… if you're new to the podcast, welcome! Please make sure you have your lesson cheat sheet handy so you can see the spelling of the words while you listen. I'll also share in the cheat sheet the full conjugation table for each verb in the present tense. And once you've listened to the episode, head over to the French Made Easy Exercise Library to download your exercises and practise what you've learned today. Everything is linked for you in the episode notes, and it's free.
Alright, let's get started with our 10 verbs.
- attendre (to wait / to wait for) - J'attends le bus. 🚌 (I'm waiting for the bus.)
- entendre (to hear) - Est-ce que tu m’entends ? 🎧 (Can you hear me?)
- vendre (to sell) - Cette boulangerie vend du pain frais. 🥖 (This bakery sells fresh bread.)
- perdre (to lose) - Je perds souvent mes clés. 🔑 (I often lose my keys.)
- répondre (to answer / to reply) - Ils répondent rapidement. ⚡ (They reply quickly.)
- rendre (to give back) - Je te rends ton livre. 📖 (I'm giving you back your book.)
- descendre (to go down / to get off) - On descend à la prochaine station. 🚇 (We're getting off at the next stop.)
- défendre (to defend / to forbid) - L’avocate défend son client. ⚖️ (The lawyer defends her client.)
- dépendre (to depend) - Ça dépend de la météo. 🌦️ (It depends on the weather.)
- confondre (to mix up / to confuse) - Je confonds souvent les verbes savoir et connaître. 📝 (I often mix up the verbs savoir and connaître.)
QUICK RECAP
- attendre (to wait / to wait for)
- entendre (to hear)
- vendre (to sell)
- perdre (to lose)
- répondre (to answer / to reply)
- rendre (to give back)
- descendre (to go down / to get off)
- défendre (to defend / to forbid)
- dépendre (to depend)
- confondre (to mix up / to confuse)
And that's all for today's episode on 10 common regular -re verbs in French. If you'd like to review other regular verbs, make sure to listen to episodes 202 and 206 of the podcast. Don't forget to go and download your episode exercises so you can practise using each of these verbs. Thanks so much for listening, I hope you enjoyed this episode, and I'll chat with you in the next one. À bientôt! 🖤