Word
J'ai vu la poussière quand l'équipe a démoli le toit.
Meaning
I saw the dust when the team demolished the roof.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of J'ai vu la poussière quand l'équipe a démoli le toit.
je
I
avoir
to have
voir
to see
quand
when
Questions & Answers about J'ai vu la poussière quand l'équipe a démoli le toit.
Why didn't we use était en train de démolir for the second part of the sentence?
The English translation says demolished, which is a completed action, so we use the passé composé a démoli. If the sentence meant you saw the dust while they were in the middle of demolishing the roof, you would use the progressive aspect était en train de démolir or the imperfect tense démolissait.
l'équipe means a team of several people. Why is the verb a démoli in the singular form?
Why is the past participle démoli spelled with an i at the end?
démolir is a regular verb ending in -ir. To form the past participle for the passé composé, you drop the -ir and add -i. This follows the exact same pattern as finir becoming fini or choisir becoming choisi.
Could I use lorsque instead of quand here?
Yes, lorsque and quand both mean when and can be used to connect these two past events. lorsque is just slightly more formal, but both are perfectly correct in this context.