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Conjugation
Objective: Select the imperfect for background description, weather, and ongoing states, and combine it with the passé composé when a completed event interrupts the scene.
| Use | Example | English |
|---|---|---|
| weather | Il pleuvait ce matin-là. | It was raining that morning. |
| atmosphere | La salle était calme. | The room was quiet. |
| physical state | J'avais faim. | I was hungry. |
| emotional state | Elle était contente. | She was happy. |
| habitual action | Nous dînions à huit heures. | We used to have dinner at eight. |
| age in the past | Il avait dix ans. | He was ten years old. |
| time in the past | Il était midi. | It was noon. |
The weather is the ongoing backdrop at the moment of the departure, so the imperfect faisait is required. The passé composé would frame the weather as a bounded event.
The rain is already ongoing at the moment of arrival, so the imperfect pleuvait describes the backdrop, while suis arrivé marks the interrupting event.
The weather is described as ongoing background, so the imperfect faisait is required, not the passé composé.
Both étais and avais describe ongoing states with no clear boundary, so they take the imperfect.
The rain is the ongoing backdrop, and the departure is the interrupting event told in the passé composé.
Était describes a state without an event. It stays in the imperfect even though the sentence is anchored in a specific past evening.
Habiter describes an ongoing state in the past, so the imperfect habitions is the natural choice.
6 exercises · about 9 minutes
A birth is a single bounded event, so it takes the passé composé. The imperfect cannot describe a completed and dated event.
Storybook openings set the scene without a bounded event, so both verbs stay in the imperfect.
Age uses the imperfect avait, since it describes a state, while the departure is a completed event in the passé composé.
The reading is the ongoing background, and the entrance is the interrupting event. The two tenses work together in one sentence.
Il y avait describes atmospheric conditions as a backdrop, so the imperfect appears in its impersonal form.