The 100 Most Common French Verbs (and How to Use Them)

Why the Most Common French Verbs Beat Any Vocabulary List

If you learn one hundred French nouns, you can label the world. If you learn the hundred most common French verbs, you can say things about it. That is the whole difference between a learner who recognises words on a menu and one who can hold a conversation.

The maths is on your side. French has tens of thousands of verbs, but frequency studies of spoken French consistently find the same pattern: a very small core does an enormous share of the work. Roughly the top 100 verbs cover the large majority of verb use in everyday speech, and the top ten alone show up in almost every sentence you will ever hear.

So this is not a list to memorise front to back. It is a list to work through in order of return, and that is how I have arranged it below.

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The Ten Verbs That Carry Most Conversations

Before the full list, these ten. They are irregular, they are unavoidable, and they are worth more than the next fifty combined. Learn them in the present tense before you touch anything else.

Two of these deserve a warning. Avoir appears where English uses to be: j'ai vingt ans (I am twenty), j'ai faim (I am hungry), j'ai froid (I am cold). And savoir versus connaître splits what English merges: savoir is knowing a fact or a skill (je sais nager — I know how to swim), connaître is being acquainted with a person or place (je connais Paris).

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The 100 Most Common French Verbs, Grouped by Behaviour

Frequency lists usually dump verbs alphabetically, which is the least useful order possible. I have grouped these by how they conjugate, because that is what determines how much effort each one costs you.

Core irregular verbs (learn individually)

These do not follow a pattern. There is no shortcut — but there are only about twenty of them in real circulation.

être (to be) · avoir (to have) · faire (to do/make) · aller (to go) · pouvoir (can) · vouloir (to want) · devoir (must) · savoir (to know) · dire (to say) · voir (to see) · prendre (to take) · venir (to come) · mettre (to put) · tenir (to hold) · falloir (to be necessary — il faut) · vivre (to live) · écrire (to write) · lire (to read) · boire (to drink) · croire (to believe) · recevoir (to receive) · connaître (to know/be familiar with) · suivre (to follow) · ouvrir (to open) · offrir (to offer)

Good news hiding in that list: prendre gives you apprendre (to learn), comprendre (to understand) and surprendre (to surprise) for free. Venir gives you devenir (to become), revenir (to come back) and tenir with all its compounds. Mettre gives you permettre, promettre, admettre. Learn one irregular pattern, collect four or five verbs.

Regular -ER verbs (the biggest and easiest group)

Around 90% of French verbs end in -er, and nearly all of them conjugate identically. Learn the endings once and you unlock the whole group.

parler (to speak) · aimer (to like/love) · penser (to think) · trouver (to find) · donner (to give) · demander (to ask) · passer (to pass/spend time) · regarder (to watch/look at) · rester (to stay) · porter (to carry/wear) · montrer (to show) · arriver (to arrive) · chercher (to look for) · entrer (to enter) · travailler (to work) · jouer (to play) · manger (to eat) · habiter (to live somewhere) · écouter (to listen) · commencer (to begin) · continuer (to continue) · apporter (to bring) · marcher (to walk/to work, of objects) · rentrer (to return home) · tomber (to fall) · garder (to keep) · oublier (to forget) · exister (to exist) · sembler (to seem) · arrêter (to stop) · acheter (to buy) · aider (to help) · étudier (to study) · voyager (to travel) · préférer (to prefer) · essayer (to try) · payer (to pay) · appeler (to call) · changer (to change) · compter (to count) · raconter (to tell a story) · rencontrer (to meet) · expliquer (to explain) · décider (to decide) · tourner (to turn) · monter (to go up) · quitter (to leave someone/somewhere) · téléphoner (to phone) · dessiner (to draw) · danser (to dance)

Watch a handful of spelling quirks: manger becomes nous mangeons (the e keeps the g soft), commencer becomes nous commençons (the cedilla does the same job for c), and acheter becomes j'achète. These are spelling adjustments, not new patterns.

Regular -IR verbs

Smaller group, one reliable pattern, recognisable because they insert -iss- in the plural: nous finissons.

finir (to finish) · choisir (to choose) · réussir (to succeed) · réfléchir (to think over) · grandir (to grow up) · remplir (to fill) · obéir (to obey) · applaudir (to applaud) · nourrir (to feed) · bâtir (to build) · réagir (to react) · guérir (to heal) · ralentir (to slow down)

Note that partir, dormir, sortir, sentir and servir also end in -ir but belong to a different, irregular family. They are common enough to be worth learning as a set.

Regular -RE verbs

The smallest of the three regular groups, but several are high frequency.

vendre (to sell) · attendre (to wait for) · entendre (to hear) · répondre (to answer) · perdre (to lose) · descendre (to go down) · rendre (to give back) · défendre (to defend) · prétendre (to claim)

Reflexive verbs you will use every day

A reflexive verb carries a pronoun that refers back to the subject: je me lève. French uses them far more than English does, especially for routines.

se lever (to get up) · se coucher (to go to bed) · s'habiller (to get dressed) · se laver (to wash) · se réveiller (to wake up) · s'appeler (to be called) · se souvenir (to remember) · s'asseoir (to sit down) · se dépêcher (to hurry) · s'ennuyer (to be bored) · se sentir (to feel) · s'occuper de (to take care of) · se rendre compte (to realise)

That is your hundred, with the compound verbs counted in. It is also, in practice, most of the verbs you need to function in French.

Want these as printable cards you can actually drill? Download our free French flashcards at French Keys — the verb set covers this core list with pronunciation.

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How to Learn the Most Common French Verbs Without Drowning

A list is not a method. Here is the sequence I give students, and it is deliberately narrow.

1. Present tense only, for the first month. Do not touch the past or the conditional. Get être, avoir, faire, aller automatic in all six persons before adding anything. If you want the full pattern work, our guide to French conjugation in the present tense walks through each group.

2. Learn verbs inside a sentence, never alone. Prendre on a flashcard is inert. Je prends le train à huit heures is a sentence you can reuse tomorrow. Your card should have the sentence on it.

3. Add the near future immediately after. Aller plus an infinitive — je vais manger, on va voir — gives you the future tense with zero new conjugation. It is the highest-value grammar shortcut in the language.

4. Then the passé composé, and only with the top twenty verbs. Most past-tense errors come from learners trying to apply it to fifty verbs at once. Master j'ai fait, j'ai pris, je suis allé, j'ai vu first.

5. Drill in chunks of seven, not fifty. Seven verbs a week, revisited daily, beats a hundred crammed in a weekend and forgotten by Wednesday.

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Three Traps English Speakers Fall Into

Manquer runs backwards. Tu me manques means "I miss you" — literally "you are missing from me." The subject and object swap compared with English.

Visiter is for places, not people. You visitez a museum; you rendez visite à a friend. Saying je visite ma grand-mère sounds like you are inspecting her.

Attendre already means "to wait for." No preposition. J'attends le bus, never j'attends pour le bus. The same goes for chercher (to look for) and écouter (to listen to) — the preposition is baked in.

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Where to Go From Here

Pick the ten verbs at the top of this article. Write one true sentence about your own life with each of them, in the present tense, today. Ten sentences is a fifteen-minute exercise and it will do more for your French than reading this list three times.

Then keep going down the groups, seven verbs a week. In three months you will have the hundred most common French verbs in active use — not recognised, used.

If you would like someone to check that your sentences are actually correct, and to push you onto the next tense at the right moment, book a free assessment with Magali at French Keys. We will find out where your verbs are solid, where they are guesswork, and build a plan from there.