Tenses

- describes an event in progress in the past. neither the beginning nor the end of action is relevant. provides background information to the story-line.

- conveys the ongoing nature of an action in the past, opposed to a punctual action (e.g. passé composé)

- used in descriptions in the past

- used to express a habit or repetition in the past

- when 'would' can be paraphrased as 'used to' (e.g. when I was younger, I would go to nursery) use the imperfect and not a conditional

- imperfect + depuis : describes an action started in the past which is still in progress at the time of narration (e.g. depuis une heure trois quarts un gros monsieur parlait = a fat gentleman had been talking for an hour and three-quarts)

- 'when the stem ends in c, it becomes ç before an a (e.g. commencer > commençait)

- a stem ending in g becomes ge before an a