When transferred to English, the past participle appears to permit simple statements about the past.
| Je arrivé a la gare ce apres-midi. | I arrived at the train station this afternoon. (?) |
| Elle mangé le petit dejourner ce matin. | She ate breakfast this morning. (?) |
| Il pris un taxi au theatre. | He took a taxi to the theater. (?) |
However, these phrases are not correct French. Furthermore, the past participle of -er verbs also sound exactly like l'imparfait tense in the first, informal second, and third singular, which means that Elle mangé le petit dejourner ce matin can sound exactly like Elle mangeait le petit dejourner ce matin, or "She used to eat breakfast this morning."
Rather than using the past participle as it's done in English, the correct one-word form for simple past statements in French is the passé simple.
| Je arrivai a la gare ce apres-midi. | I arrived at the train station this afternoon. |
| Elle mangea le petit dejourner ce matin. | She ate breakfast this morning. |
| Il pendit un taxi au theatre. | He took a taxi to the theater. |
The passé simple acts much like a past participle in English. However, it generally has vanished from spoken French in France (with some use still in Canada). The passé simple is found in literary and refined language, and some speakers will use it to make their speech appear amusingly formal or refined. While it appears in conjugation dictionaries, many introductory textbooks for French-learning students do not include it.
In contemporary French, when using a past participle, the past must be expressed with the passé composé tense.