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The Imperfect Past

The Imperfect Past
The idea that English has an imperfect past might seem strange at first but, in truth, all senses can and are reflected in any language. What this means is that if the idea exists in one language, Portuguese for example – our champion of verb tenses –  then the same expression must also be possible in other languages, even if the sense is not reflected in the spelling of the written transcription (visible tense marking).

Unfortunately, for those who had become used to the absence of the imperfect, I must inform all that the imperfect has always been present in the language. Although there is no new written form to learn – no  different endings – there is, however, quite a different intention or inflection involved. Instead of reflecting back to a moment fixed in time past, the imperfect carries a sense of period, a closed but, nevertheless, extended time and, as such, moves from a previous time position to a later one. Thus our imperfect must move forward.
Imperfect Past - Vector

If we observe the imperfect tense in a Latin language we can easily see how this is true. In Portuguese we can feel the sound run from deeper inside the mouth moving forward: dava, falava, jogava. And it is no different in English: gave; spoke; played.

  • He always gave me good advice.
  • We spoke for hours
  • Back in the 1970’s, George Best played for Manchester United 




Imperfect Past v Simple Past      
In the sentence above we can feel that the verbs, for example - played is not thrown back. In fact, the verb occupies a similar relative position to the Portuguese- jogava. The two words, having the same intention, not surprisingly possess the same direction!
The imperfect past seems almost to be a mirror image of the factual past starting further back inside the mouth, but moving forward to the same end point in the mouth. In the case of our classic past –ed verbs this means the point of inflection of the modal did.


Introdução
The imperfect : Used to …

An alternative idea, often used to substitute the imperfect, employs the past form of the verb use(used) + infinitive to express a past habit:
  • He used to give me good advice.
  • We used to speak for hours.
  • Back in the 1970’s, George Best used to play for Manchester United.
Imperfect Past - Used to / Would   

We can observe how used recoils in the mouth with the aim of launching the infinitive. Infinitives have the nature of normally shows a subsequent action to the preceding verb. Nevertheless, here, we can feel how it recovers the ground occupied by the receding verb used.
The sensation is really very similar to that of the imperfect in terms of the intention within the pronunciation dynamic. Nevertheless, it is merely an extra recourse which further exists in certain languages and particularly in Portuguese (our example) used to – acostomava.

The use of would to create an imperfect idea

The modal auxiliary would provides another alternative for expressing the imperfect past. We can add it to our range of expressions for talking about past habits and imperfect tense ideas:

  • George Best would dazzle the opposing defenders with his ball skills.

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