The imperfect tense: conjugations 2 and 3 (-eam, -eai)

The Imperfect Tense: "Used To"

To talk about ongoing past actions, habits, or things you "used to" do, Romanian uses the imperfect tense. It is perfect for sharing childhood memories or setting the scene in a story.

Conjugations 2 and 3

Verbs in the 2nd conjugation end in -ea (like dispărea), and verbs in the 3rd conjugation end in -e.

To form the imperfect tense for both of these groups, drop the final -ea or -e from the infinitive and add these shared endings: -eam, -eai, -ea, -eam, -eați, -eau.

Notice that the eu and noi forms are identical. Context will always tell you who is doing the action.

Here is the imperfect tense in action for the singular pronouns (eu, tu, and el/ea):

And here are examples using the plural pronouns (noi, voi, ei/ele):

Interrupted Actions

Beyond habits, the imperfect tense is also used to describe an ongoing background action that gets interrupted by something else.