Purpose

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to conjugate regular verbs in the imparfait and understand its core use for ongoing or habitual past actions.

Lesson Explanation

Where the passé composé (previous three lessons) marks a completed action, the imparfait describes ongoing, habitual, or background actions in the past — genuinely closer to English “used to” or “was …ing,” and structurally parallel to the Spanish and Italian imperfect tenses from earlier-built Gabal courses.

The imparfait is formed from the nous form of the present tense (minus -ons), plus one shared set of endings across nearly all verbs: -ais, -ais, -ait, -ions, -iez, -aient. From parler (nous parl-ons): je parlais, tu parlais, il parlait, nous parlions, vous parliez, ils parlaient.

A genuinely rare and useful fact: only ONE verb is truly irregular in the imparfait — être, whose stem is ét- rather than derived from a “nous” present form: j’étais, tu étais, il était, nous étions, vous étiez, ils étaient.

Examples: Quand j’étais enfant, je jouais dans le parc tous les jours. (When I was a child, I used to play in the park every day.) — note both verbs here are imparfait, describing an ongoing state and a habitual action, structurally identical to the Spanish/Italian examples from earlier-built Gabal courses.

Practice Questions