Conjugating Respecter in French

If you guessed that  respecter  means to respect in French, you would be correct. When you want to say things such as she respected in the past tense or we will respect in the future tense, the verb will need to be conjugated. The purpose of this French lesson is to help you learn the most basic forms of  respecter. The Basic Conjugations of  Respecter French verb conjugations can be quite complicated. Not only do you have to memorize quite a few words, but you also have to watch out for verbs that dont follow the rules. The great news is that respecter likes rules and it follows the most common conjugation pattern found in French. Respecter  is a  regular -er verb  and the endings you learn here are used for the majority of French verbs. That does make each new one you learn just a little easier than the last.   The first step in any conjugation is to find the verb stem. For  respecter, that is  respect-. To this, a variety of endings are added to correspond with both the subject pronoun and the tense of your sentence. For example, an  -e  is added for the present  je respecte  (I am respecting) and  -ions  is added for the imperfect  nous respections  (we respected). Present Future Imperfect je respecte respecterai respectais tu respectes respecteras respectais il respecte respectera respectait nous respectons respecterons respections vous respectez respecterez respectiez ils respectent respecteront respectaient The Present Participle of  Respecter When you add  -ant  to these regular verbs, youre always forming the  present participle. For  respecter, that gives you the word  respectant. Not only is it a verb, it may also be a noun or adjective under certain circumstances. Respecter  in the Compound Past Tense The passà © composà © is a common way to express the past tense in French. Its a compound that requires two elements: the present tense conjugate of avoir and the past participle respectà ©. When you combine the two, you get phrases such as jai respectà © (I respected) and nous avons respectà © (we respected). More Simple Conjugations of  Respecter While  respecter  does have more conjugations, a few more of the simplest will round off this lesson and give your vocabulary a solid foundation. Verb moods like  the subjunctive  can help you imply uncertainty to the act of respecting, for instance. At the same time,  the conditional  is very useful if that action is dependent on something. Used with less frequency, the passà © simple and the imperfect subjunctive are also good to study. These are literary tenses and found more often in written French than in conversation. Subjunctive Conditional Pass Simple Imperfect Subjunctive je respecte respecterais respectai respectasse tu respectes respecterais respectas respectasses il respecte respecterait respecta respectt nous respections respecterions respectmes respectassions vous respectiez respecteriez respecttes respectassiez ils respectent respecteraient respectrent respectassent If you find yourself in need of forcefully or directly demanding respect, you can use the imperative. When you do use it, its perfectly fine to drop the subject pronoun: tu respecte becomes respecte. Imperative (tu) respecte (nous) respectons (vous) respectez