Voted Best Answer
Jan 23, 2014 - 02:45 AM
One of the challenging things about French is that many things do sound the same. However your definition of J'ai été is not correct here, it's the past tense of the verb être or to be. If you wanted to say I have to eat, you use a different verb all together. You could say, J'ai besoin de manger, which translated is I need to eat. Or you could say Je dois manager, I must eat. If you wanted to say I have in the context of a possession you would say J'ai, as in J'ai une voiture, Try to keep the mindset that when we have words in English which have multiple meanings such as 'have' those multiple meanings seldom ever translate directly to French.