Welcome to lesson 3 in our mini French Grammar series. After le passé récent and le futur proche, it’s time this week to look at the French tense known as l’imparfait.

L’Imparfait (The imperfect)

Like le passé composé, le passé simple, and the passé récent, l’imparfait is a tense for talking about things that happened in the past. It differs from those other past tenses though. The imparfait isn’t used for actions that just happened once in past, it is used for (1) on-going or incompleted actions in the past, (2) habitual actions in the past, and (3) descriptions of things like feelings and the weather in the past.

Forming l’imparfait

L’imparfait is a relatively easy verb tense to learn because all verbs (except for one!) are formed the same way. To form the imparfait:
begin with the present tense ‘nous’ form of the verb (the one that ends in –ons)
– remove that –ons
+ and add the proper ending from the following list:

The one exception to this rule? The verb être which is conjugated as follows:

L’Imparfait in action

Let’s look at some examples of each use mentioned above:

1. On-going or incomplete actions in the past

2. Habitual actions in the past

3. Descriptions of the past

Want to get fancy? You can combine the imparfait with the construction of the passé récent to talk about two things that happened in the past, one right before the other. For example:
Je venais de rentrer, quand le téléphone a sonné. [I had just come back in when the phone rang.]

Nous venions de partir quand Michel m’a dit “Je crois que j’ai laissé le fer à repasser branché!” [We had just left when Michael told me “I think I left the iron plugged in!”] 

À suivre…

Next week, fourth and final grammar lesson (for now!). We’ll wrap up this series with a little story that incorporates key elements of our recent discussions and will help you see how the different tenses function together.

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