The Imperfect is a past tense used to express an action that has no definite beginning or ending, or it describes what "was happening" in the past. The conjugation of the imperfect is not complicated, it is the use of the Preterit versus the Imperfect that can be challenging. Please click here to go to the page which describes in more detail the imperfect and preterit tenses.
Conjugate the verb in the NOUS form
(Present tense)
Ex: Nous parlons
Drop the –ons and add the imparfait endings
Parlons
Endings:
je parl -ais
nous parl -ions
tu parl -ais vous parl -iez
il parl -ait elles parl -aient
*The only irregular verb in the imparfait is the verb être*
j’étais nous étions
tu étais vous étiez
il/elle était ils/elles étaient
All other verbs follow the regular steps of conjugation. Make sure you know all of your present tense conjugations of regular, irregular and stem changing verbs!
Here are two examples of what happens with stem/spell changing verbs:
*the E is not needed in the ns/vs form because the I softens the G sound*
*the ç is not needed in the ns/vs form because the I allows the C to have the S sound*
