Imperfect tense french when is it used

Prendre to take Nous form: prenons Stem: pren-. If you know the n ous form of any verb, then you know the stem if you chop off the — ons. So what? You ask. Did you catch it? In addition, watch out for verbs that end with -cer or — ger. The nous form of these verbs have pesky little spelling changes in the present tense:. Commencer to start and other — cer verbs are conjugated like:. Nager to swim and other — ger verbs are conjugated like:. Only one irregular verb compared to the daunting amount of irregular verbs the perfect tense burdens us with.

So when the heck do we use this anyway? Think of the perfect tense as something that happened at a definite moment, perfect because the action had a beginning and an end. With the imperfect tense, it is something that happened and happened for an undetermined amount of time.

It happened in an imperfect amount of time, aka undefined. When you are describing how things looked or how you felt, you use the imperfect tense:.

Since you are describing things in the past and your emotions, you would use the imperfect tense think back to the first usage rule: the house was green for an indeterminable amount of time.

This will mix in with our conditional tense later on, but if you are expressing a wish using si if , then you will want to use the imperfect tense:. If only I had a lot of money! How about we go to the movies? I was in the middle of leaving. Also, using venir de in the past takes the imperfect. Some do not. You will use the imperfect tense with the perfect tense the most often.

You can contact him on Instagram. Please log in again. The login page will open in a new tab. After logging in you can close it and return to this page. Follow Us Now. Table of Contents. English vs French. When and How to Use the Imperfect Tense. How to Form the Imperfect Tense in French. The Imperfect Tense for -er Verbs. The French Imperfect Tense for -ir Verbs. The Imperfect Tense for -re Verbs. Verbs with Spelling Changes. The Imperfect Tense for Irregular Verbs.

Quick Recap. To give a physical or emotional description of a past event. To talk about a past habitual occurrence or state of being. To indicate an action that was ongoing when something else took place.

The Imperfect Tense for -er Verbs Use the same verb stem as the one being used for the perfect tense. This is simply the infinitive, but with the -er chopped off. Add the correct ending to the stem. To conjugate the imperfect tense in French, we take the present-tense stem of the 1 st person plural form of the verb the nous form , and add the following endings identical for verbs of all groups :. Here we add an - iss - to the word stem in the plural forms.

Mentir , partir and sentir are part of this group. We do not add - iss - to form the plural. To see the conjugation of any French verb in the imparfait , go to our verb conjugator. Our online exercises for French help you to learn and practice grammar rules in an interactive manner.