Passé Composé is for what happened once. L'Imparfait is for what was happening or what you used to do.
Use Imparfait for:
Take the Nous form of the present tense and cut off the -ons.
Add these endings to the stem. They sound mostly the same!
A camera flash. BAM. Done.
J'ai mangé (I ate)
A video stream. Ongoing.
Je mangeais (I was eating)
Grandma talks about the past.
Quand j'étais petite, je jouais toujours dehors.
(When I was little, I always used to play outside.)Il n'y avait pas d'internet ?
(There wasn't any internet?)Non ! Nous lisions des livres et nous parlions !
(No! We used to read books and we used to talk!)The Imparfait is the tense of nostalgia. The phrase "C'était mieux avant" (It was better before) is a common French sentiment. Whether talking about the price of baguette or pre-digital life, the French love to romanticize the past using the Imparfait.
Choose the correct form for PARLER (To speak).
Download the Chapter 20 deck for Imparfait conjugations.