Conjugation of venir (to come)

Salut, and welcome to our lesson about conjugation of venir at Language Easy! Along with aller, the verb venir (to come) is a very common verb in French. Like in English, they are close in their meaning, but not at all in their conjugation. Venir belongs to the third group of verbs, because although its termination is in –ir, its present participle is not ending in –issant  (venant).

When you master the conjugation of venir, you’ll know how to conjugate its derived verbs :

• Revenir (to come back)
• Devenir (to become)
• Se souvenir (to remember)
• Convenir (to convene)
• Survenir (to occur)
• Prévenir (to prevent)
• Provenir (to come from)
• Parvenir (to reach)
• Intervenir (to intervene)

Allez, on y va !

The verb venir is always conjugated with the auxiliary verb être.

Beside the conjugation of aller, here is an interesting historical fact about this verb. As a way of greeting, French people often ask each other : Comment ça va ? (How is it going ?). But do you know the origin of this expression ?

In the past, doctors would ask their patient about the form and aspect of their… excrements, to help them in their diagnostic. The first question of a medical interview was to know how it was going down there :

Comment ça va, à la selle ?
= How is it going, about the excrements ?

Nowadays, the second part of the question was cut out, and honestly I have no idea about how this expression generalized itself out of the medical realm. It would be a very bad idea though to answer it how it was meant to be answered to in the first place, because if your boss asks you how you are going every morning, I doubt that he’s expecting you to tell about the last time you went to the bathroom.

Et voilà, we reached the end of our lesson about the conjugation of venir. It’s an important verb to know, so good job on your study ! Also, be sure not to neglect other non-irregular verbs in -ir from the second group here.

Allez, à bientôt !