Dr Mrs P Vandertrampp – Flikr
DR MRS P. VANDERTRAMP (or Dr Mrs. Vandertrampp) and “The House of Être” is a commonly taught abbreviation and learning strategy to help French learners remember some verbs which use être as an auxiliary verb (as opposed to avoir). Looking more closely at DR MRS P. VANDERTRAMP, you will notice that these are all French movement verbs and the abbreviation certainly doesn’t cover every verb which uses être.
This article will go over what DR MRS P. VANDERTRAMP stands for, why it is needed in French, and what is “The House of Être”.
The doctor is in.
DR MRS P. VANDERTRAMP
Devenir (to become) past participle: devenu
Revenir (to come back) past participle: revenu
Monter (to climb) past participle: monté
Rester (to stay) past participle: resté
Sortir (to leave) past participle: sorti
Passer (to pass) past participle: passé
Venir (to come) past participle: venu
Aller (to go) past participle: allé
Naître (to be born) past participle: né
Descendre (to descend) past participle: descendu
Entrer (to enter) past participle: entré
Rentrer (to re-enter) past participle: rentré
Tomber (to fall) past participle: tombé
Retourner (to turn around) past participle: retourné
Arriver (to arrive / to come) past participle: arrivé
Mourir (to die) past participle: mort
Partir (to leave) past participle: parti
Application in French
So what’s all the fuss? Well, the VANDERTRAMP verbs use être as opposed to avoir when placed into the past tense. From the list of verbs above, the past participle is the word you would use after correctly conjugating être. DO NOT FORGET to make the past participle agree in accord with both the gender & number of the subjects! So, if whoever you are talking about is a girl then you must add an extra “e” to the end of the past participle, and if you’re talking about more than one person then you need to add an “s” to the past participle. One last caveat is that when there’s a mixed group of guys and girls, then you only need to denote plurality and not gender, add an “s” but forego adding an “e”.
Confusing? Here are some examples of Dr. Mrs P. Vandertramp at work to help you out:
Il est allé au parc hier.
He went to the park yesterday.
(not il a allé au parc hier).
Elle est allée au parc hier.
She went to the park yesterday.
(notice we add an extra “e”?)
Nous sommes rentré(e)s chez nous à minuit.
We returned home at midnight.
Vous (singular, formal) êtes né le même jour que moi!
You were born the same day as me!
If you are a girl, and you want to talk about yourself in the first person (“je”), you must add an extra “e” to the end of the past participle. See the following example:
Je suis tombée amoureuse de Marc.
I fell in love with Mark.
Pay attention to a common mistake with the verb sortir! When somebody is leaving you use “être”, but when you leave something (an object), you use “avoir”!
Mme. LeBlanc a sorti son iPhone sur la table.
Miss LeBlanc had left her iPhone on the table.
DR MRS VANDER-WHO?
Never heard of this abbreviation? You’re not alone! I know plenty of French learners who have learned in a more conventional fashion about which verbs take être. However, when I went over what the abbreviation means, many people seemed to have an “Oh! That’s useful” kind of expression on their face. The only problem about abbreviations is that you’ll end up spending a lot of time trying to remember which letters correspond to which words.
Nowadays, I don’t remember the abbreviation because the method worked; meaning, I remember by heart which verbs require être.The “House of Être” simply represents a house with arrows indicating the verbs which should be used. For example, the staircase inside the house will have an arrow pointing up (montre) and an arrow pointing down (descendre).
A lot of the verbs in the DR MRS P. VANDERTRAMP abbreviation have its opposite given as well (naître/mourir, entre/rentre, etc…).
Let us know if you learned Dr. Mrs. P. Vandertramp in school or how useful the acronym is for you?
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It’s not an exhaustive list though.
For example the verb “fatiguer” uses être as an auxiliary verb but it’s not in the list above. Or the verb “décevoir”.
And yes these two verbs can use avoir as an auxiliary but so does “sortir”, “passer”, “entrer”, “rentrer” and “retourner”.
It’s good to know french.
yea
Dr & Mrs.p vandertramp
Is useful
There are a few other verbs which take être in the passé composé: paître / appaître / dispaître ; tourner (tho, some say “but there is retourner”; which doesn’t make sense to me since venir has several entries as does entrer); and, a few others of these words with re- suffixes, like, redescendre, remonter, renaître, redevenir, and retomber. For these reasons, I like the concept of the “House of Être” since it lends itself to these additional words without mucking with a perfectly good “starter” acronym!
No, not exactly.
“Paître” means to graze and there is no passé composé for that verb in French.
As for “*appaître” and “*dispaître”, these verbs don’t exist.
If you meant “paraître”, “apparaître” and “disparaître”, then it is true that they can be used with “être”, but not necessarily. Depending on the meaning, one can use either “avoir” or “être”.
Tourner is not an être verb.
My father taught me MASTER VAND MP which didnt cover all the verbs but helped me to remember back in the 70s!
ha ha. I think mine tried to do the same
Like u people said there’s P under the MRS. Can it be VANDER TRAMP with two P’s. And I’ve never heard of the second P ‘Passer’. BTW thanks for letting us know.
I teach three meanings for Passer:
1) passer + a preposition = pass by/under/next to/ behind,etc.
2) passer + le temps = to spend time (day/week/summer,etc)
3) passer un examen = to take a test (NOT “pass” a test)
You only change your location to do the first meaning, so you use être to construct the passé composé. The other two meanings use Avoir as the helping verb. When my students fill out a Vandertramp study chart, I have them put an asterisk next to the bottom P (passer) as a reminder that this is the only version of Passer that uses être.
cooool
I have a question. When adding an e for girls, and s for plural verbs, do you only do this for DR MRS VANDERTRAMP verbs? or do you do this for all past participle verbs?
We add e or s only when the auxiliary verb is être. However, the verbs with avoir as the auxiliary verb can also take e or s in case of a direct object.
The verbs that use avoir,as the auxiliary (for instance aimer) do not add the extra e and/or s in the past participle form.
Only DR MRS VANDERTRAMP
For passé:
IF 1) avoir is the auxiliary verb
2) there exists a direct object (not necessarily a pronoun)
3) the direct object comes before the verb
THEN the past participle agrees in number and gender with the direct preceding object
Good article with one exception. What you have here is a mnemonic device and not an abbreviation.
This is so helpful. Merci beaucoup
This quite helpful to me. It was good to know, bur from my side to learn all the verbs what we can do is we can make up a story in which verbs are coming, ofcourse we remember the story.
thank you guys so much you guys helped me better than my teacher does so i just wanted to say thanks ^_^
J.ELK. This is a cool trial to ease les étudiant de français. Merci beaucoup.
Love the website, thanks. Wouldn’t a girl be “amoureuse”? ( see the “tomber” example)
I’m pretty sure the gender changes based on the subject, not the object, if that makes sense. So if you were a woman, you would say “amoureuse”, whether or not your lover was a man or woman.
THAT IS WHAT THEY SAID
IT IS ALL ABOUT THE SUBJECT
In your penultimate paragraph “The House of Etre ….” , I am confused by (montre) which in my dictionary means something else.
Just a beginner, Tom
he means monter
montre…the watch of time
montrer verb means to show once you conjugate it it become je montre ,,i shown for example I SHOW YOU THE WATCH,,,je te montre la montre
ok ?
They meant he been “monter” which means to mount
to climb
monter means to go up/climb, montrer means to show, Une montre is a watch (noun)
This website is gr8- thank u sooo much. This is exactly what I needed.
This is missing the verb passer:
DRMRSVANDERTRAMPP
Just add another p.
Thank you kind stranger. I’m sure the verb « passer » felt very left out. However, “Vandertramp” with one “p” is more sought out by search engines, so I opted for the (also) common abbreviation “Dr. Mrs. P. Vandertramp”.
Actually, its there all right. Its under Mrs… They added a P to the Mrs section.
I must say DR MRS VANDERTRAMP I helpful
I’ve never heard the acronym used with two P’s? Why does nobody mention passer ever? Thanks in advance!