Qui ils sont - Grammar

For example, let’s take the regular verb jouer = to play

The first step of forming the imperfect tense is to put this verb in the nous form of the present tense.

• This gives us nous jouons

We need to now remove the +ons ending from jouons

• This leaves us with nous jou

We now need to add the appropriate imperfect tense endings to this newly found stem

• We now have nous + jou + ions = nous jouions
  • 🡪 We used to play / We were playing

• Avoir = Av+
• Attendre = Attend+
• Faire = Fais+
• Finir = Finiss+
• Être = Et+

I was finishing would be Je finissais

She used to be would be Elle était

• Can you see how these irregular verbs have been formed using the correct 2 steps?
• They have an irregular stem where we then add an imperfect tense ending.