To Be Or not to Be

Yet another complicated subject for English speakers, the french verbs. English has this simple thing that verbs are the same for all pronouns but he/she/it where you add an -s or -es at the end it (e.g. I do, you do, she does, we do, ...). In French, same as in almost all european languages, it is not the case. The verb changes its form all the time.

The King of All Verbs, to Be

Let us start by the only case that is the same in English and French, to be. It changes its forms at present depending on the pronoun.

I am
You are
He/she/it is
We are
You are
They are

This list in French translates to :

Je suis
Tu es
Il/elle est (remember everything is or male or female in French, so no 'it' case for us, read this recent post)
Nous sommes
Vous êtes
Ils/elles sont

You can notice that there are 6 different forms of the verb 'to be' at the present tense. And it is going to be the same for every single verb in French, 6 forms at each tense, past, present and future !

The good thing is there is a kind of logic behind it. Another good thing is that there are so many exceptions to the logic that we have some sort of dictionaries to help us conjugating our verbs !