French I: Verb Charts
French I: The Imperfect
The imperfect is formed by dropping the
-ons ending of the
nous form of the present tense of regular verbs and all irregular verbs except
être, as illustrated in Table
1 :
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The endings that must be added are as follows:
Verbs already ending in -ions in the present tense have an additional i before the -ions and the -iez imperfect endings:
-
Nous riions. (We were laughing.)
-
Vous étudiiez. (You were studying.)
-
Nous vérifiions le moteur. (We were checking the motor.)
To form the negative, place ne before the conjugated imperfect form of the verb and place the negative word after it, as follows:
-
Je ne parlais pas. (I wasn't speaking.)
-
Nous ne regardions rien. (We weren't looking at anything.)
Remember that pronouns remain before the conjugated verb: Elle ne vous regardait pas. (She wasn't looking at you.)
