Lesson 9: Avoir

Avoir -- which means to have -- is an irregular verb, and it's one of the most important verbs that you will learn.  Not only will you need it for the obvious reason of saying "I have" but you'll need it later in order to form sentences in the past tense.

Since avoir is a decidedly irregular verb, it doesn't have a conjugation pattern to follow.  You'll just have to memorize the conjugations.

Avoir

J'ai*

Tu as

Il/elle/on a

Nous avons

Vous avez

Ils/elles ont

*The reason that we say "j'ai" as opposed to "je ai" is that in French you often can't have two vowels next to each other.  Since "je" ends with a vowel and "ai" begins with a vowel, the "e" in "je" has to be replaced with an apostrophe.  It's the same reason that we say "l'école" as opposed to "le école."

Now that you know the verb for "to have," you can make sentences such as:

J'ai un frère.  I have a brother.

Tu as un livre.  You have a book.

Il a un chat qui s'appelle Fluffy.  He has a cat named fluffy.