French grammar trick #6: Past participle or infinitive?

The French language is full of exceptions and nasty rules when it comes to its grammar and orthography. This series of posts will give you some tricks to remember them quite easily.

It is sometimes difficult to know if we need to use the participe passé (past participle) or the infinitif (infinitive) form of a verbe.
A good trick is to replace to verb with prendre (to take), a verb of the third group which past participle is pris/prise, and see if it sounds correct.

“Je suis tombé dans un piège” (I fell in a trap), would give “Je suis prendre dans un piège”, which sounds wrong (the conjugated auxiliary verb être followed by an infinitive verb cannot happen in a grammatically correct sentence), hence the past participle tombé is correct (and tomber is not).

French grammar trick #1: a or à?
French grammar trick #2: One or two Rs?
French grammar trick #3: Où or ou?
French grammar trick #4: Which adjectives are placed before their noun in French?
French grammar trick #5: être or avoir?

Don’t forget to upvote this post if you would like me to present other French grammar tricks, and leave a comment if you want me to deal with a specific grammatic point.

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