#passé composé matching imparfait
frank frost
lost dust
Yeah I would've said « habitaient » as well
Conversely, I don't know if I would put « je n'ai pas su » here…
molten valve
What' wrong with "je n'ai pas su"? Too stilted?
lost dust
Usually, « savoir » in passé composé implies learning or finding out something that changed your state of knowledge
« Comment est-ce que tu as su que Pierre était pas malade ? »
We would translate this as 'How did you find out that Pierre wasn't sick' because the passé composé implies that you learnt or guessed something that changed your perception of something . As in, before said something was known, you thought that Pierre was sick but as it turned out, he wasn't
molten valve
Huh, I read that sentence as "How is that that you knew Pierre wasn't sick", as in the speaker found out the other person knew all along Pierre wasn't sick.
coarse valley
passé composé is used for singular events in time
rather than doing the action of knowing or not at that point, you were in the state of not knowing, which falls within the realm of imparfait
lost dust
Yeah, if I instead asked the question of a state of being, I would use the imparfait like
« Est-ce que tu savais que Pierre était malade ? »
coarse valley
passé composé marks a line between before and after the action.
while this is a rare use case, using savoir the way bertie did in the Pierre example indicates that before the action, you didn't know, and after the action, you knew, hence the "find out" translation
there are use cases where you can use savoir in the passé simple, for the regular state of knowing something you basically always wanna use imparfait
molten valve
Merci... admittedly I'm not fully understanding this but it's past 1am on my end. I'll get back to this in the morning.
lost dust
dw about it