#oliviajane

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

sacred hingeBOT
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Please be patient

Our volunteers look into many questions every day; sometimes it takes them a little while to answer.

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Make it descriptive, including relevant context, but also to the point. This way you improve your chances of getting a more relevant and specific answer.

reef lichen
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Usually, it is a question of time. If the action occured in the past, but is fairly recent, passé composé is supposed to be used.

For actions that took place in the past and are not recent, then the duration matters : if it's a long action, we should use imparfait, if it's a brief action, we should use passé simple.

However, the passé simple has almost completly disappeared from modern spoken french, and you'll most likely only encounter it in older books/literature now. It is now customary to replace the passé simple by passé composé for short actions that occured in the past, regardless of when they took place. Some examples:

- "Hier, j'ai acheté du pain" (passé composé) = "I bought bread yesterday"
- "Hier, j'ai marché dans le parc" (passé composé) = "I walked in the park yesterday"
--> Yesterday is in the past but fairly recent, so passé composé is obvious here, regardless of the duration of the action

- "La semaine dernière, j'étais chez un ami" (imparfait) = "Last week, I was at a friend's home"
--> The verb être (to be) is used with imparfait, because "last week" is in the past, and you're saying that you stayed there the whole week.

- "Il y a un an, j'achetai cette maison" (passé simple, old) = "Il y a un an, j'ai acheté cette maison" (passé composé, modern) = "A year ago, I bought this house"
--> Here, the action of buying is very short, and occured a long time ago, so passé simple is correct to use. However, you're more likely to encounter the passé composé version in modern french, as i've explained above.

harsh robin
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this is about the imparfait

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@solemn osprey Unfortunately, the difference between the imparfait and the passé composé is contextual so there's no 'easy' way. There are certainly clues but it's not something you can instantly understand.

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The basic idea is that the passé composé describes past actions that have a clear start and end, and actions that cause a change of state (as in, it has a clear before/after state). The imparfait describes actions past actions that don't have a clear start/end nor a change of state (we can say that it is 'wholly' in the past) which includes habitual actions.

reef lichen