Not unlike Marmite, people tend to either love or loathe them. The bane of many a language learning life, verbs are those essential parts of speech that denote actions (je cours, tu a fini), occurrences (il a plu, il sera amusant) or states of being (je suis fatigué, elle est optimiste). No sentence is complete without one. While French verbs can appear quite daunting at first, the initial learning cuvre is thankfully not that steep.

In French, a given verb will vary according to tense (present, past or future) and mood (imperfect, conditional, or subjunctive). While the lion's share of French verbs follow a regular set of rules - and are therefore quite easy to conjugate - there are a number of everyday irregular verbs that require learning on a case-by-case basis. Verbs can also have several complements and may be followed by a noun, an adverb, a preposition, a clause or even another verb when in the infinitive form.

While Ph.D. theses can and have been written on the parlances and intricacies of the règles de grammaire and - more pertinently - les verbes français, Flyover French appreciate the necessity of walking before rummaging around for the running shoes. In order to converse freely and with confidence, you'll need to be well acquainted with les verbes français.