<span>Passé compose
</span>This is usually the first past tense taught in French grammar<span> books. You know how to form it, but what specifically does it mean? There is not an exact equivalent in English, but our closest tense is the simple past. I ate. He read. She won. You understood. The passé composé represents a one-time event in the past, something that has both begun and ended already in our story.
Imparfait
</span><span>Like the passé composé, there is not an exact equivalent of this tense in English. The majority of the time, it is translated with either the "was/were + [verb]-ing" or the "used to [verb]" tenses, though it can be others as well. I was driving my car. We used to eat ice cream on Sundays. It was a cloudy day. These are all sentences that would use the imparfait in French. This tense represents an ongoing event in the past, something that is currently taking place in our story.
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Comparing the Two
Here is a short story in French: Quand j'étais jeune, le samedi ma famille et moi allions au ciné. Une fois, on a vu "Les Misérables" avec Gérard Depardieu. This story has three different verbs in it, two in the imparfait and one in the passé composé. The translation reads as follows: When I was young, on Saturdays my family and I used to go to the movies. One time, we saw "Les Misérables" with Gérard Depardieu.
