The imperfect tense 

1 The imperfect is, together with the present perfect, one of the most used past tenses in Italian. It is called ‘imperfect’ because, generally speaking, there is no reference to the beginning or end of the action it expresses: either the length of time the action lasted is not relevant, or the action is seen as the background to another action, or two actions took place at the same time and lasted the same length of time. Here are some typical examples: 

Mio nonno lavorava in India. Mia nonna era infermiera. Mentre io entravo, Elena usciva. Quando ho cominciato la scuola avevo cinque anni. Elena è arrivata mentre io uscivo. Claudia parlava con un’amica quando è arrivato l’autobus. Quando ero al mare nuotavo tutti i giorni. 

My grandfather used to work in India. My grandmother was a nurse. As I was going in, Elena was coming out. When I started school I was fi ve. Elena arrived as I was going out. Claudia was talking to a friend when the bus arrived. When I was at the seaside I went/used to go swimming every day. 

As you can see from the examples, the Italian imperfect corresponds to sev- eral di ff erent English forms. We will look at the di ff erent meanings and uses of this tense, but fi rst we will look at its forms. 

## The forms of the imperfect 

2 The forms of the imperfect are very regular. Here are the endings for the three conjugations ( -are , -ere , -ire ): 

