The passé composé tells you that an action was completed.
The imparfait doesn't tell you whether an action was completed
or not.
|
Le jeune homme a glissé sur une peau de banane. Le jeune homme marchait dans la rue. |
Other examples:
|
Il a plu hier. Il pleuvait hier. Ce matin, je suis allée au travail. Ce matin, j'allais au travail... |
'Ce matin, j'allais au travail' suggests that your journey to work was left incomplete. It suggests that something happened on the way that interrupted your journey. Maybe you still made it to work, after overcoming some hurdles. Or maybe you never made it.
The imparfait is often used to describe an action that was interrupted. In this sense it is similar to the English tense 'was doing'.
On its own, the sentence 'Ce matin, j'allais au travail' just feels incomplete. It leaves the audience waiting for a 'but then...', an explanation, an excuse of some kind. You can end the sentence after 'travail', but if you do, you really need further sentences giving more of an explanation.
| Ce matin, j'allais au travail. Quand je suis descendue
du bus, j'ai vu un homme glisser sur une peau de banane.
(This morning I was on my way to work. When I got off the bus, I saw a man slip on a banana skin.) |
(This idea of 'incompleteness' is why the imparfait is called the imparfait or imperfect in English: the Latin for incomplete is imperfectus, it's the original meaning of the word 'imperfect', or imparfait. In English the passé composé is sometimes correspondingly called the perfect, because it narrates a completed action.)
 |