Imparfait (Imperfect tense) in French help!

ray2012

Right, I know the endings for imparfait and all that craic, but what I don't get is WHEN I am suppose to use imparfait instead of Passé Composé say. I've looked online but it's fairly hard to understand.. Anyone care to explain it nice and clear to me?:P
Will appreciate it!

Cailin CoisFarraige

ray2012 wrote: »

Right, I know the endings for imparfait and all that craic, but what I don't get is WHEN I am suppose to use imparfait instead of Passé Composé say. I've looked online but it's fairly hard to understand.. Anyone care to explain it nice and clear to me?:P
Will appreciate it!

L'imparfait is used to talk about the past, usually you can recognise it in English by words like "were/was" or "used to" eg. It was sunny/ We were watching/ I used to live in Dublin.

• You use it to DESCRIBE what things were like in the past, and particularly how people were feeling:

> I was very happy after the wedding.
> It was pouring rain.

• You use it to say what USED TO happen, or something you did regularly in the past:

> They used to eat at that restaurant every night.
> She always wore a black hat.

• You use it to show that something was happening, when something else happened, e.g. when telling a story:

> We were eating dinner when the visitors arrived.
> As I was listening to the radio, the winner was announced.

Just remember, in French, we don't translate the "was/were" part of the verb. So for example in the last sentence above, "I was listening" translates as "J'écoutais".

As a general rule, the Passé Composé is used for things that happened in the past and completed in the past. These things are usually a one-off event, e.g. I ate my breakfast early this morning. I gave him my number.

Hope this helps

Canard

It translates more literally as "I used to..." than "I <verb>ed". The three situations we were always taught are:
An interrupted action (I was doing my homework, when you called (called being the normal past tense)
Emotions - I was sad / happy / angry. This is just a rule, always use the imparfait here.
An entirely finished action - this one is confusing and I'll admit I still mix it up. :L "I used to go there when I was younger". I always had the impression that you don't use it for more recent things but when I was staying with a French family, the woman said to my friend that she didn't know he didn't like some kind of food and said "Je ne savais pas". I think in those kind of situations you can use either.
(Just saw the above post after posting this, that's a better explanation - a once off action takes the passe compose, and a more continuous action would take the imperfect, hence the "savais" bit there)

Usually you use the imperfect for things like "it was funny" too, e.g. "c'etait drole". I'm pretty sure that's because the passe compose version is "cela a ete drole" which translates better as "that has been funny", and you'd use that for something like "cela a ete toujours drole" e.g. "that has always been funny".

Any clearer? Hope it helped.

edit: damn, beaten to it :P

ray2012

thanks a million both of ye :P can fairly grasp it now!
Merci beaucoup!

dmca93

Another tip is to think of how a painter paints the background of a picture before the foreground.

Exp: "I was walking down the road (imparfait) when I fell. (passé composé)"

"Je marchais dans la rue quand je suis tombé."

*I think that's right anyway!:P