French Tenses

D.J. Shore

do you need to know the compound tenses in french for leaving cert?

Canard

What do you mean? I just looked them up there and there's a pretty long list (but I've never referred to them as compound tenses). From the list I'm looking at there's some you'd need to know like passé composé but theres others like the subjunctive past that you don't need to know, but the more the better.

D.J. Shore

hmm well that's what they're called in the back of my textbook ... Pluperfect e.g. (I had been: J'avais été) , future perfect (I will have been: J'aurai été) and conditional perfect (I would have been: J'aurais été)

Canard

Oh just found a definition, they're when there's a second part to it like je vais aller as opposed to j'irai :P

I knew the pluperfect and conditional perfect (we called it the conditional past though? Maybe its the same thing haha), but not the future perfect, but I would have understood it in a comprehension, so I don't think it matters a whole lot.

It's definitely good to know them and they're not overly complicated (same as in English really and it's just combining tenses it seems), so if I were you I'd learn them, you can never know too much French. :P