What this is
When one verb is followed by another in French, something has to sit between them — or nothing does. There are exactly three possibilities:
- à — je commence à travailler
- de — j’essaie de travailler
- nothing — je veux travailler
Which one a verb takes is not predictable. It is not about meaning, it is not about the infinitive that follows, and English gives no clue at all, because English uses to for all three. I start to work, I try to work, I want to work — one word in English, three different structures in French.
This is the concept where French stops being a system and becomes a list. The good news is that the list is short, the verbs on it are ones you already know, and the preposition sticks to the verb the way gender sticks to a noun.
The rule
The à group — the preposition points forward, toward something being begun, attempted, or learned:
| Verb | Example |
|---|---|
| commencer à | je commence à comprendre |
| apprendre à | elle apprend à nager |
| aider à | nous aidons les voisins à porter les valises |
| réussir à | il réussit à trouver les clés |
| continuer à | elle continue à étudier |
The de group:
| Verb | Example |
|---|---|
| essayer de | j’essaie de parler français |
| oublier de | elle oublie de fermer la fenêtre |
| décider de | nous décidons de rester |
| finir de | je finis de travailler |
| refuser de | il refuse de venir |
The nothing group — modals and a handful of very common verbs:
pouvoir, vouloir, devoir, aller, savoir, aimer, préférer, détester, espérer
Je peux partir. Je veux partir. Je dois partir. Je vais partir. J’aime partir. No preposition, ever.
jouer splits by what you play:
| jouer à + game or sport | jouer au football, jouer aux cartes, jouer aux échecs |
| jouer de + instrument | jouer du piano, jouer de la guitare, jouer du violon |
Why it works this way
There is a faint historical logic, and it is worth knowing even though it will not let you guess reliably.
À originally meant motion toward. Verbs that describe heading into an activity — beginning it, learning it, succeeding at it — picked it up. De meant motion away from, or origin. Verbs about detaching from something, finishing it, or declining it drifted toward de.
You can feel it in jouer. Jouer au football is entering the game — you go into the activity. Jouer du piano is drawing sound out of the instrument — the music comes from it. That one really does work.
But commencer à and finir de are opposites in meaning and the logic does not predict them; essayer de is an attempt, which sounds like à territory, and it is not. The pattern explains perhaps half the list. Learn the verb with the preposition attached and you never need the explanation.
Edge cases
The preposition belongs to the verb, not the meaning
Commencer à travailler and essayer de travailler describe the same kind of act — someone engaging with work. They take different prepositions. So do commencer à and finir de, which are direct opposites.
The practical consequence: never store a verb alone. Store essayer de, commencer à, réussir à as units, exactly as you store une maison rather than maison.
jouer divides the world in two
Jouer au tennis — a sport. Jouer du violon — an instrument. Getting it backwards produces something a French speaker will notice immediately, and in both directions the contraction rule from earlier in this module applies on top:
- jouer à + le football → jouer au football
- jouer à + les cartes → jouer aux cartes
- jouer de + le piano → jouer du piano
- jouer de + la guitare → jouer de la guitare (feminine, no contraction)
Taking nothing is a real category
Je veux partir is not a sentence with a missing word. The bare infinitive is what these verbs require, and inserting a preposition — je veux de partir, je peux à partir — is as wrong as leaving one out elsewhere.
This matters because the nothing group contains the verbs you use most. Pouvoir, vouloir, devoir and aller between them cover a large share of everything you will ever say, and all four take a bare infinitive.
continuer takes either
Continuer à and continuer de are both correct and mean the same thing. À is commoner in speech, de slightly more formal in writing. This is genuinely a free choice — one of very few in this concept.
What English speakers get wrong here
Assuming to maps onto something. It does not. English to before an infinitive is a marker, not a preposition, and it corresponds to à, to de, and to nothing at all depending entirely on the French verb in front of it.
Inserting a preposition after a modal. Je veux de partir and je peux à sortir come from over-applying the rule once it clicks. The modals take nothing.
Dropping the preposition where English drops it. English says help him finish, with no to. French says l’aider à finir. English says I’ll go see, French says je vais voir — this one happens to match, which makes the mismatches harder to notice.
Getting jouer backwards. Jouer du football and jouer au piano are both common learner errors, and both land oddly on the ear — the first suggests you are playing something out of football, the second that football is an instrument.