Aller is a Regular Verb

Did you know that "aller" is a regular verb? So is "avoir". Most verbs in French are regular. It may sound unbelievable but it is true. One of the reasons that most teachers never tell you these verbs are regular is because, to explain how they could possibly be regular, may require a lot of explanation. Another reason, and I suspect the dominant reason, is that most teachers really do believe these verbs are irregular. I would quite frankly to learn a few more rules that explain loads of so-called exceptions that learn one or two rules and then have to commit thousands of supposed exceptions to memory. As I said before in this blog, the way you look at things can make it easier or more difficult to learn.

Before I launch into a partial discussion at any rate of why these verbs are regular, I want to make you aware of a few facts about language, any language. Let me start with an example from English. In English, to malke the opposite of an adjective, we sometimes add the prefix in-. For example, "finite" becomes "infinite" and "credible" becomes "incredible". By the same logic, the opposite of "possible" should be "inpossible". However, the correct word is actually "impossible". What has happened is that there has been a sound change. When you say 'n' your lips are open but when you say 'p' your lips are closed. In language is something called economy of effort. We human beings like things to be as easy as possible and that goes for the languages we speak too. It takes more energy and effort to keep your lips apart to say 'n' and then to suddenly go straight into saying 'p' than it does to find a sound that is similar to 'n' but with our lips closed. The corresponding sound is 'm'. If you are not certain what I have just said, keep saying these words "inpossible" and "impossible" and see which one feels easier to say.

Take also the example of "credible" and "incredible". If you say "c", you feel the back of your tongue going up towards your velum (the soft palate at the back of your mouth). However, when you say "n", the tip of your tongue touches the alveolar ridge, that is the ridge just behind your teeth. To move your tongue from saying 'n' to 'c' constitutes a lot of work for your tongue. There is, however, a sound close to 'n' that is pronounced at the back of the mouth just like 'c'. That sound can be found in the 'ng' of "sing". Listen to the word "incredible". The 'n' is not pronounced like a normal 'n'.

Getting back to French, a number of changes also occur. Some of these are sound changes. Some of these involve inserting sounds where there once were none (some English speakers insert an 'r' between words where there was never an 'r').

Let us consider the present tense of the verbs "aller" and "avoir" for the pronouns nous and vous.

The word "to go" in French, if we strip away the infinitive is "a", not "all" or anything else you may may thought. It is just "a". The same applies for "avoir". The verb is simply "a". The "ll" and the "voi" were inserted to accommodate sound changes as well as to make things easier and fluent to say. Imagine always saying "a-er" or "a-ir" all the time. It does not flow.

Suppose we wish to form the present tense of aller for the pronouns mentioned. In theory, we should say:

Nous aons
Vous aez

As I said, this kind of speech is staccato. We therefore introduce a transition sound, "ll" to make the speech flow, hence forms:

Nous allons
Vous allez

We have the same problem with avoir. Again, in theory the forms should be:

Nous aons
Vous aez

However, we prefer to insert a sound just to make the speech flow. Now, if we insert "ll", how will we possibly know if we mean, for example, "we are going" or "we have". We thus use the sound "v". hence, for "avoir" we have:

Nous avons
Vous avez

You might wonder what makes "ll" and "v" so special to be chosen as the transition sounds. First, they are both produced in the front of the mouth, which is quite close to where the sound "a" is produced (kind of). Also, to say "o" or "e" in "ons" and "ez" our tongue (or part of it) needs to move higher in our mouth. Since "ll" and "v" are pronounced with the tongue higher in the mouth, it is easier to move from "a" to these sounds and then finally to "o" or "ez" rather than to go directly to these two vowels. Think of a similar situation: you are standing on the ground (where "a" is) and need to jump onto a high platform (where "e" and "o" are) but the distance is so great that a jump would be very difficult, if not impossible. However, suppose you had a middle platform you could jump onto ("ll" or "v") that you could then use to easily jump onto the higher platform. Do you see now that your tongue is for much more than French kissing?

Of course, no French or English speaker or any speaker of any language is consciously aware of any of these facts when they learn their mother tongue. These things happen naturally. Just as you would find it uncomfortable to twist your upper body too far, so your tongue has its own levels of comfort and levels where it starts working too hard.

Getting back to "aller" and "avoir", let us look at the present tense of tu, il and elle. Let us start with "avoir". Now, "avoir" is a little like "ouvrir" in the present tense, that is it does not add anything at the end of the verb for tu, il and elle. Never mind the spelling. Hence we have:

Tu as (the 's' is a spelling issue rather than a pronunciation issue.)
Il a
Elle a

Let us compare the above with "aller". Aller should theoretically be exactly the same - it is a + er after all. However, if we treat it the same, then how will anyone know if "Il a" means "he is going" or "he has". To distinguish the two, we add 'v' in front of these words in the case of "aller. We thus have the forms of aller:

Tu vas
Il va
Elle va

Let us now consider ils and elles for "avoir". In theory, the forms should be:

Ils aent
Elles aent

Bear in mind that there was a time in the French language that "ent" was pronounced like the "an" in "bilan". Thus aent was pronounced in its entirety at one time (at least the vowel parts). There is a process called "assimilation", which is present in every language, where two sounds become more like each other or even become one sound. Try saying "aent" fast and repeatedly. You might find yourself saying "ont", which is exactly what French speakers do, hence the forms:

Ils ont
Elles ont

In theory, we should have the same forms for "aller" but once again there would be confusion, hence the use of "v" to give:

Ils vont
Elles vont

And, finally, let us look at "je" and "aller:. This should in theory be:

Je ae

The 'e' was pronounced somewhere in the history of the language and somehow the two sounds melded together to become a long 'e' sound. We should thus have the form:

Je ai (according to modern spelling rules)

However, by a similar process, we can work out that the present tense for "je" of "avoir" is "je ai". So, if this were the case, we would never be able to know if someone was saying "I have" or "I am going". Once again, the 'v comes to the rescue. So, for aller, we rather say:

Je vais (never mind the spelling; listen to the sounds)

For avoir, we simply have:

J'ai (Je ai does not flow nicely.)


You can think about the future and perfect tenses of these verbs and see if you can find out why they behave the way they do. They are perfectly regular.

You may also want to ask yourself if there is any connection between the word "haber" in Latin and habvoire in French. "You take the red Linguistics pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes" (credit and apologies to "The Matrix").