Drop the infinitive ending and add -am, -ai, -a, -am, -ați, -au to verbs in -a and -î (a lucra → lucram, a coborî → coboram), or -eam, -eai, -ea, -eam, -eați, -eau to verbs in -ea, -e and -i (a avea → aveam, a merge → mergeam, a citi → citeam); a fi is irregular: eram, erai, era, eram, erați, erau. Use the imperfect for what used to happen repeatedly, for describing the past (weather, age, mood, scenery), and for an action in progress in the background. The perfectul compus, by contrast, reports a single finished event, so an ongoing imperfect action is what gets interrupted by a perfect compus one.
Examples
- Când eram mic, mergeam la școală cu bicicleta.
- When I was little, I used to go to school by bike.
- Era noapte, ploua și toată lumea dormea.
- It was night, it was raining and everyone was sleeping.
- Citeam o carte când a sunat telefonul.
- I was reading a book when the phone rang.
- Pe vremea aceea nu aveam telefon mobil.
- Back then I didn't have a mobile phone.
The mistake to avoid
Learners reach for the perfectul compus (am mers) for childhood habits and past descriptions, where Romanian needs the imperfect (mergeam, era) — and they forget that the eu and noi forms are identical (eram = "I was" and "we were"), so the context or pronoun must make the subject clear.
Where this fits in
The imperfect: past habits & descriptions, Romanian B1: Use the imperfect to talk about how things used to be, describe the past, and narrate ongoing actions interrupted by another event.