Past participle agreement with preceding direct objects

J'ai vu la maison.ai vue.I saw the house.I saw it.

With avoir, the past participle normally doesn't change no matter who or what the sentence is about. But there's one well-known exception: when a direct object pronoun or the relative pronoun que comes before the auxiliary instead of the direct object following the participle as usual, the past participle agrees with that preceding direct object in gender and number.

Quick shortcut: with avoir, the past participle stays invariable — unless a direct object comes before the auxiliary (a direct object pronoun, or the relative que). Then it agrees in gender and number with that direct object.

The normal rule: no agreement

When the direct object is a noun sitting in its usual spot, right after the verb, the participle stays invariable — this is the rule you already know from passé composé with avoir:

• Elle a mangé une pomme. (She ate an apple.) — not ❌ Elle a mangée une pomme, even though pomme is feminine.
• Il a écrit deux lettres. (He wrote two letters.) — not ❌ Il a écrites deux lettres, even though lettres is feminine plural.

When a direct object pronoun comes first

In the passé composé, a direct object pronoun (le, la, les, or me, te, nous, vous when they're the direct object) sits right before the auxiliary — and when it does, the participle agrees with it:

• *J'ai vu la maison. → Je **l'*ai vue. (I saw it.) — l' = la maison, feminine singular.
• Il a acheté les fleurs. → Il les a achetées. (He bought them.) — les = les fleurs, feminine plural.
• Tu as pris mes clés ? → Tu les as prises ? (Did you take them?) — feminine plural.
• *Elle **m'*a vu. (She saw me — speaker is male.) *Elle **m'*a vue. (She saw me — speaker is female.) Elle nous a vus. (She saw us — a group that's male or mixed.) — with me/te/nous/vous, the agreement follows the real gender and number of the person or people the pronoun refers to, not just gender.

When the relative pronoun que comes first

Que works the same way: whenever it's the direct object of the verb inside its own clause, the participle agrees with que's antecedent — the noun it replaces, sitting earlier in the sentence:

• Voici la maison que j'ai achetée. (Here's the house that I bought.) — que = la maison.
• Les livres que tu as lus sont excellents. (The books that you read are excellent.) — que = les livres, masculine plural.

Forming the agreement

The participle takes the same endings as a regular adjective — add -e for feminine, -s for plural, -es for feminine plural:

For participles ending in a vowel (vu, mangé, fini...), the feminine and plural forms are usually spelled differently but pronounced identically to the masculine singular — this is mostly a written rule. For participles ending in a consonant (pris, fait, mis...), the feminine ending is often audible too: prise is pronounced differently from pris.

What doesn't trigger agreement

Three things that look similar but never cause the participle to change:

• Indirect object pronouns (lui, leur) — they aren't direct objects, so they never trigger agreement: Il leur a parlé. (He talked to them.) — not ❌ parlés.
• En — even when it stands in for a direct object and comes before the auxiliary, en is a fixed exception and never triggers agreement: Des pommes ? J'en ai mangé. (Apples? I ate some.) — not ❌ mangées.
• A direct object noun that follows the past participle, in its normal spot — as in the first section above, agreement only happens when the direct object comes before the auxiliary.

Common mistakes

• ❌ J'ai vu la maison → Je l'ai vu. → ✅ Je l'ai vue. (l' = la maison, feminine — the participle must agree)
• ❌ Il leur a parlés. → ✅ Il leur a parlé. (leur is an indirect object pronoun — it never triggers agreement)
• ❌ Des pommes ? J'en ai mangées. → ✅ J'en ai mangé. (en never triggers agreement, even standing for a direct object)
• ❌ Elle a mangée une pomme. → ✅ Elle a mangé une pomme. (the direct object comes after the verb here, so there's no agreement)

Quick check

Key takeaways

• With avoir, the past participle stays invariable unless a direct object comes before the auxiliary.
• A preceding direct object pronoun (le, la, les, or me/te/nous/vous as direct object) or the relative que triggers agreement with the noun it stands for.
• The participle takes adjective-style endings: -e (feminine), -s (plural), -es (feminine plural).
• Indirect object pronouns (lui, leur) and en never trigger agreement, even when they precede the verb.
• A direct object noun that comes after the verb, in its normal position, never triggers agreement either.