Welcome to this deck on the French imperfect tense, or 'l'imparfait'. This is a past tense, but it's different from the perfect tense, or 'passé composé'. The imperfect tense is used to talk about the past in a descriptive way. Think of it as setting the scene or talking about how things used to be. You'll use it to say things like 'I was doing something', 'I used to do something', or 'it was a certain way'.

Forming the imperfect tense is very regular, which is great news. There's a simple, two-step rule. First, take the 'nous' form of the verb in the present tense. For example, for the verb 'parler', to speak, the 'nous' form is 'nous parlons'. Second, drop the 'ons' ending to get the stem. In this case, the stem is 'parl'. Finally, you add the specific imperfect endings.

The imperfect endings are the same for all verbs. For 'je', the ending is 'ais', pronounced 'ay'. For 'tu', it's also 'ais'. For 'il', 'elle', and 'on', it's 'ait', also pronounced 'ay'. For 'nous', it's 'ions'. For 'vous', it's 'iez'. And for 'ils' and 'elles', it's 'aient', which is also pronounced 'ay'. Let's see this in action.