

When I was young, I used to live in Montreal. Quand j'étais jeune, j'habitais à Montréal. Another use of the imparfait is to describe a state of being or an action that existed at some time in the past without indicating a specific beginning or end.In the latter sentences in which the verbs are in the passé composé, the actions were performed once, whereas in the examples in which the verbs are in the imparfait, the actions took place repeatedly in the past. Pierre est rentré à la maison vers cinq heures.

Its cousins are the pass compos, the pass simple, and the plus-que-parfait. The imparfait is part of the past tenses. This tense belongs to the Indicative family (the biggest one in French). Bonus: Get a printable list of the top 100 French verbs, with links to quizzes for every tense. GRAMMAR IN ACTION What is the imparfait in French Let me introduce you to the imparfait. Ĭompare these examples with the following which are very similar except that the verbs are in the passé composé. Past Participle: construit Present Participle: construisant Auxilliary verb: Avoir Irregular forms are in red. Pierre used to return home around 5 o'clock. Pierre rentrait à la maison vers cinq heures. It tells what you used to do or would do repeatedly. This is a compound verb with the imperfect (limparfait) of tre/avoir plus.

All of the singular and the third-person plural endings are pronounced the same way. Add the following endings to the stem: a i s, a i s, a i t, i o n s, i e z, a i e n t.The stem consists of the first-person plural ( nous) form of the present tense without the o n s ending.In this module we will study another past tense, the Imparfait ( the Imperfect), which is easy to learn because there is only one irregular verb ( être). 116 construire (to build) Present Participle: construisant Past Participle: construit Irregular verb ending in -uire Present construis construisons.
