L’année dernière, nous jouions souvent.

Because jouions is in the imparfait (imperfect), which is often used for:

• habitual actions in the past
• repeated actions in the past
• background descriptions

Here, souvent gives a strong clue that the action happened repeatedly, so the imparfait is the natural choice.

So this sentence means something like:

• we used to play often
• we would often play

If you said nous avons joué, that would usually point to a more specific completed action: we played.

This is a very common learner question.

The imparfait endings for nous and vous are:

• -ions
• -iez

The verb jouer gets its imparfait stem from the nous form of the present tense:

• present: nous jouons
• remove -ons → stem: jou-
• add -ions → jouions

So the spelling is completely regular:

• jou-
  • -ions = jouions

It looks strange, but it is normal.

It is pronounced roughly like zhoo-yon.

More exactly, it is two syllables:

• joui-
• -ons

In IPA, it is /ʒu.jɔ̃/.

A useful point: even though the spelling has two i’s, you do not pronounce them as two separate full vowels. The word flows smoothly.

Because French does elision before a vowel sound.

The article la becomes l’ before a noun that begins with a vowel:

• la table
• but l’année

So la année is not correct. It must be l’année.

Yes. L’an dernier is also correct and very common.

Both an and année mean year, but they are not always used in exactly the same way:

• an is often used for counting or dating
• année often emphasizes the year as a period of time or lived experience

That said, in this expression, both work:

• l’année dernière
• l’an dernier

Both mean last year.

In French, adverbs like souvent, toujours, and parfois are often placed after the conjugated verb in simple tenses.

So:

• nous jouions souvent

is the most neutral, natural order.

English often puts often before the main verb, but French does not always match English word order.

Yes, absolutely.

Both are correct:

• L’année dernière, nous jouions souvent.
• Nous jouions souvent l’année dernière.

The difference is mainly emphasis:

• L’année dernière at the beginning sets the time frame right away
• putting it at the end sounds a little more neutral

Yes.

In everyday spoken French, on very often replaces nous:

• On jouait souvent.

This is very natural in conversation.

Nous jouions souvent is still completely correct, but it can sound a bit more formal, careful, or written.

Not usually in the most natural English sense.

Grammatically, the imparfait can sometimes match English was/were ...-ing, but in this sentence, because of souvent, it most naturally expresses a habit.

So the best idea is:

• we used to play often
• we would often play

rather than the less natural English phrasing we were playing often.

A few helpful points:

• l’année: the l’ links directly to année
• nous jouions: there is no liaison between nous and jouions, because jouions begins with the consonant sound j
• dernière is pronounced roughly dehr-nyair

So the sentence flows roughly like:

la-nay dehr-nyair, noo zhoo-yon soo-van

That is only an approximation, but it can help with reading it aloud.