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J'étais insouciant et très idéaliste.

J'étais insouciant et très idéaliste.
I was carefree and very idealistic.
From Lesson 131:The imperfect tense of être (j'étais, tu étais)·French

Breakdown of J'étais insouciant et très idéaliste.

je
I
être
to be
très
very
et
and
insouciant
carefree
idéaliste
idealistic

Questions & Answers about J'étais insouciant et très idéaliste.

How do we form the imperfect tense of être here?
Être is the only verb with an irregular stem in the imperfect. Instead of taking the nous form of the present tense to find the root like we normally do, we use the special stem ét-. Then, we add the regular imperfect ending for je, which is -ais, giving us j'étais.
Why is this sentence in the imperfect tense rather than the passé composé (j'ai été)?
We use the imperfect tense here because it describes an ongoing state, a personality trait, or a characteristic in the past. It tells us how things used to be. The passé composé is used instead for specific, completed actions or events.
Is the person saying this sentence male or female?
The speaker is male. We know this because the adjective insouciant (carefree) is in its masculine form. If a woman were saying this, she would add an -e to the end, making it insouciante.
Why doesn't the adjective idéaliste have a different feminine form?
Idéaliste is an adjective that already ends in an -e in its basic dictionary form. When an adjective naturally ends in an unaccented -e, its masculine and feminine forms are exactly the same, so it wouldn't change here even if the speaker were female.

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