The most important verb of all...

Your verb of the week is... 

Avoir To have

Why couldn’t we start with an easier verb, you ask? One that follows the regular rules of conjugation? That’s because avoir is the basis for many tenses of conjugation and therefore must be mastered first.

If you know how to properly conjugate avoir, you can conjugate things into the past tense, the future tense... you can tell people how old you are... and best of all, you can tell them what you have, to make them jealous.

Here it is in the most commonly used tenses.

Présent	Imparfait	Future simple
Today, I have	Yesterday, I had	Tomorrow, I will have
j'ai tu as il a nous avons vous avez ils ont	j'avais tu avais il avait nous avions vous aviez ils avaient	j'aurai tu auras il aura nous aurons vous aurez ils auront

But that’s not all! Because avoir is the base of many composed tenses, let’s look at those too. 

Composed tenses are formed by using an auxiliary verb such as avoir and tacking on the past tense of the other verb to form a new tense.  It seems complicated but we do it in English all the time. Take the following:

J’ai mangé	I have eaten
J’avais mangé	I had eaten
J’aurai mangé	I will have eaten

Not too bad, right? The “mangé” part which doesn’t change is called the participe passé. Avoir has a participe passé as well (eu), and you can use it on itself! 

J’ai eu	I have had
J’avais eu	I had had
J’aurai eu	I will have had

Granted, they aren’t the most common tenses, but you still need to know they exist!

Here are some composed tenses of avoir. You’ll notice they are the same as the ones above, with “eu” at the end.

Passé composé	Plus-que-parfait	Future simple
Yesterday, I have had	Yesterday, I had had	Tomorrow, I will have had
j'ai eu tu as eu il a eu nous avons eu vous avez eu ils ont eu	j'avais eu tu avais eu il avait eu nous avions eu vous aviez eu ils avaient eu	j'aurai eu tu auras eu il aura eu nous aurons eu vous aurez eu ils auront eu

Examples:

Chez nous, nous avons plein de jouets. Ma sœur a un ours en peluche, j’ai un camion et mon ami Luc a une voiture miniature. J’avais une poupée mais comme elle a eu une tache, ma mère l’a jetée. Pour ma fête, j’ai eu un jeu de lego mais j’aimerai avoir plus de morceaux. J’aurai eu un avion l’année prochaine! Après noël, on aura encore plus de jouets! Toi, quels jouets as-tu?

Challenge :

1. Translate the paragraph into english. (No feeding the whole thing into a translator!)
2. Write a few sentences using as many different tenses as you can.