Breakdown of L'ingénieur cherchait du fer quand il a découvert la mine.
il
he
avoir
to have
chercher
to look for
quand
when
du
some (partitive, masculine)
découvrir
to discover
l'ingénieur
the engineer (m)
la mine
the mine
le fer
the iron
Questions & Answers about L'ingénieur cherchait du fer quand il a découvert la mine.
Why do we use two different past tenses in this sentence?
This is a classic example of an interrupted action! The imperfect tense (cherchait) sets the scene for the ongoing background action (was looking for), while the passé composé (a découvert) is used for the specific, sudden event (discovered) that happened in the middle of it.
Why isn't there a word for 'for' after cherchait?
Why is it du fer instead of just fer?
In English, we can just say 'looking for iron', but French requires an article before the noun. Because iron (fer) is an uncountable material here (meaning 'some iron'), we use the masculine partitive article du (which is a contraction of de + le).
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