Past Participle Agreement with Être

The rule is simple at its heart. The past participle must match the subject in gender and number. Gender means masculine or feminine. Number means singular or plural. If the subject is a girl, you add an e to the end of the verb. If there are many people, you add an s. If there is a group of only women, you add es. It is exactly like matching your socks to your outfit. You wouldn't wear one neon green sock and one dress shoe, right? French verbs feel the same way about their endings. They want to look cohesive. When you use the auxiliary verb être in the passé composé, the past participle acts almost like an adjective. It describes the state of the subject after the action is finished.

1. 1To get this right, follow these steps every time you write a sentence in the past:
2. 2Identify your subject. For example, Alice.
3. 3Choose the correct form of être. For Alice, it is est.
4. 4Pick your past participle. Let's use partir which becomes parti.
5. 5Check the subject's gender. Alice is feminine.
6. 6Add the feminine ending e to the participle. Now you have partie.
7. 7Check the number. Alice is just one person.
8. 8You do not need a plural s here.
9. 9Put it all together: Alice est partie.
10. 10Think of the extra e as a fancy hat for feminine subjects. Everyone loves a good hat. If you were talking about Alice et Claire, you would add both the e and the s to get parties.

You use this rule with a specific group of verbs. Most people learn them using the mnemonic "DR & MRS VANDERTRAMP." These are verbs of movement or change of state. Imagine a house. You entrer (enter), monter (go up the stairs), and eventually partir (leave). All these movement verbs require être and, therefore, require agreement. You also use this for reflexive verbs. These are verbs where you do something to yourself, like se laver (to wash oneself) or se réveiller (to wake up). If you are washing your own face, use être. It is like the verb is looping back to you. Imagine you are at a job interview in Paris. You say Je suis venu (I came). If you are a woman, you must write Je suis venue. It’s a small detail, but it shows you have a great eye for precision.

Don't use this with avoir verbs in most cases. About 90% of French verbs use avoir. For those, the participle stays the same regardless of the subject. J'ai mangé is the same for everyone. It doesn't matter if you are a man, a woman, or a group of twelve. Also, be careful with reflexive verbs and body parts. This is a sneaky trap! If you say Elle s'est lavé les mains (She washed her hands), there is no agreement on lavé. Why? Because the hands are the direct object, not the person. Think of it like a grammar "pothole" to avoid. If the action is directed at a specific body part mentioned after the verb, the agreement stops. It’s like a traffic light that just turned red.

The most frequent mistake is forgetting the plural s. People often write Ils sont allé. This looks naked to a French person! It must be Ils sont allés. Another mistake is over-correcting. Don't start adding e and s to every verb you see. If the helper verb is avoir, leave the participle alone. Another classic error is the mixed group. If you have 99 women and one man, the grammar rule says the group is masculine. You only use s, not es. Yes, it feels a bit old-fashioned, but that is the rule for now! Think of the masculine as the "default" for any group that isn't 100% female.

Compare être and avoir. With avoir, the verb is like a heavy rock. It doesn't move or change for the subject. With être, the verb is like water. It takes the shape of the container (the subject). If you say Il est tombé, it's the basic form. If you say Elle est tombée, you see the change. In English, we don't have this at all. We just say "fell." French gives you more information in just one or two letters. It is like a secret code that tells you exactly who is being talked about. This is especially helpful in books where the subject might be a pronoun like on or nous.