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passé composé et imparfait?

Hi all,
If you say for example "I was going to go to the cinema" why do you use the imperfect? Is it because it's a description of what you were going to do?





Sorry for being so dumb.


Alice_G
Reply 1
Avatar for bigforehead
bigforehead
yeah i would use the imperfect for that one. I know this sounds really trivial but i think its because the sentence has a "was" in it, as opposed to a went to the cinema. lol, well thats how i do it.
Doesn't sound like either to me. Sounds like "j'allais aller au cinéma" - which doesn't sound very French, granted. Erm, how about "j'étais sur le point d'aller au cinéma", or "je voulais aller au cinéma"?

Imperfect would be "I was going to the cinema".
Reply 3
Avatar for quintsy
quintsy
17
"J'allais faire x" is normally an acceptable construction, although it does sound a little odd when the second veb is aller too. If you want to keep the sense practically the same, then you could change the second "aller" to "voir un film" which is essentially what you're doing. :p: So it would be: "J'allais voir un film au cinéma, mais.."
Reply 4
Avatar for Flugtag
Flugtag
how would you say the "I would have.." in say for exmaple "i would have liked to go shopping?"
J'aurais voulu faire du shopping.

"I would have" is conditional perfect, expressed by the conditional of the auxiliary verb, then the past participle. J'aurais fait, il aurait joué, tu serais allé...

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