Passé composé vs Imparfait

📌 Note de grammaire

Use the passé composé for actions that happened at a specific moment, interrupted a state, or advanced the storyline forward. It views the event as a completed whole.

📌 Note de grammaire

Use the imparfait to describe ongoing background situations, weather, physical or emotional states, and past habits ('used to do'). There is no clear beginning or end.

📌 Note de grammaire

A very common pattern combines both tenses: an ongoing action in the imparfait is suddenly interrupted by a new action in the passé composé. The word 'quand' or 'lorsque' often links them.

📌 Note de grammaire

When narrating a sequence of events that happened one after another, pushing the story forward, use the passé composé for every action in the chain.

📌 Note de grammaire

At the beginning of a story or description, the imparfait sets the stage (weather, time, atmosphere) before the main events (passé composé) take place.

📌 Note de grammaire

When two or more background actions were happening at the same time without interrupting each other, use the imparfait for both verbs, often connected by 'pendant que'.

📌 Note de grammaire

Verbs of mental state (vouloir, pouvoir, savoir, connaître, penser, croire) usually take the imparfait. However, when used in the passé composé, they often imply a sudden change, a specific realization, or an action successfully completed.

📌 Note de grammaire

When expressing what someone thought, wanted, knew, or felt over an extended, unspecified period without a sharp beginning or end, use the imparfait.

📌 Note de grammaire

If an action happened a specific number of times ('three times') or lasted for a bounded, quantified duration ('for two hours'), use the passé composé because it frames the action with clear boundaries.

📌 Note de grammaire

When describing past routines, customs, or things people 'used to' do regularly without specifying an exact total count or finish date, use the imparfait.

📌 Note de grammaire

When a narrative breaks its calm, descriptive flow (imparfait) with a sudden, striking event or reaction that demands attention, that event takes the passé composé.

📌 Note de grammaire

When looking back at a specific time period and summarizing the total outcome, success, or completed experience, use the passé composé even if it spanned a while.