French

The Past Imperfect Tense

This PowerPoint was created by Matthew Vernon, email here.

What is the Past Imperfect Tense?

In all languages, the Imperfect Tense is to show a something that was happening or happened in the past. For example - I was playing football… or I played football…

It normally is used to show the fact you may no longer do it. I played football… shows that he/she no longer plays it now.

How do I do it?

In French, it’s all about the endings. Firstly, you take your infinitive (the default verb name) and you take off it’s end. The end of a verb is either -er, -ir or -re.

There are several different endings that you must add onto the stem. The stem is the name given to verb after the ending is taken off.

How do I do it?

Turn your infinitive into a stem.parler => parl-finir => finiss-être => ét-

-ir verbs are a little bit annoying, but you’ll get used to it.

Your endings

Ending

je/j’ -ais

tu -ais

il/elle/on -ait

nous -ions

vous -iez

ils/elles -aient

So, here are your imperfect endings. You’ll need these for the imperfect and the conditional.

Add these to the end of your stem and place them in your sentence and all of a sudden, you have a lovely little past imperfect. Top marks all round!

Some examples

je parlais le allemand.

I used to speak German.

nous étions à Paris.

We were in Paris.

etcetera… and so forth…

I hope that helped!

Matthew Vernon

thefartydoctor@hotmail.co.uk