A2
venir de — the recent past
How venir de expresses the immediate past in French, why it stays in the present, and how it pairs with aller plus infinitive.
Conjugate venir in the present, add de, then the infinitive. It means the action has only just happened.
Je viens de manger.
I come of to-eat
I’ve just eaten.
Il vient de partir.
he comes of to-leave
He’s just left.
It stays in the present
The verb refers to the past, and the tense does not. This is the part that feels wrong and is right.
Je suis venu de manger.
Je viens de manger.
Je suis venu de manger would be a statement about physically coming from somewhere. The construction only works in the present.
The one other tense it takes is the imperfect, for something that had just happened: je venais de partir quand il a téléphoné — I had just left when he rang.
The pair with aller
French has a matched set: one construction for what just happened, one for what is about to.
| je viens de partir | I’ve just left |
| je vais partir | I’m about to leave |
Both use a motion verb in the present for something outside the present, and between them they cover most of what conversation actually needs — see aller + infinitive.
The de cannot be dropped
Je viens manger.
Je viens de manger.
Je viens manger is a real sentence meaning I’m coming to eat. Losing the de does not produce an error — it produces a different statement, which is worse.