Lesson 10.7 Changing Meanings in the Past

Has anyone else kinda tumbled in this chapter?
I found out for myself that the changing verbs in l'imparfait are difficult to discribe and almost impossible to translate including all implied meanings.

The first example: “je connaissais le président” 

That means that one has known the président since an unknown time in the past and possibly still knows him in the present.

The translation though is in past simple: “I knew the president”

That means that one has known the président in the past, but not anymore, for whatever reason. Maybe one does not have no contact anymore, or the president has died, or other reasons.

Then I had the idea … “what about the present?”: “I know the president”
That implies, that one started to know the president in the past and definately still knows him.

So all these grammatical timings are different in some aspect and it becomes clear, that there is no equivalent to the Imparfait in the english language (and neither in german).

Comparing the options that I found and actually discussing it with chat gpt, I came to the conclusion that the present with “I know the president” is the closest match to the Imparfait “Je connaissais le président” which may seem unlogical, cause one is a past tense and the other one is a present tense, but if you compare the implied meanings, they are pretty close.

What do you think?

I came to the conclusion for myself that translations from one language to another can be tricke if there is no equivalent tense in those languages.

The Imparfait is one of these tenses that seem very special to the french language in it's meaning of an ongoing action in the past that is undefined in the presense.

Maybe giving more context might help, as in a longer sentense or within a story, where you have more surrounding infornation about the situation and then the meaning becomes clearer.

I understand that this is quite a challenge to manage in developing a language course.

I'm not a fan of grammar as a focus in learning languages over the years, but I completely agree that the logic of direct translation - let alone conceptual equivalents - isn't applicable.  Different languages are exactly that.

I completely agree Chris,

I just had another flashcard where the translation does not make any sense at all, cause english and french have different use of tenses, which causes me to give a wrong answer.

Englisch: We HAVE HAD this motorbike for two years.

French: On A cette moto depuis deux ans. (We have this motorbike since two years)

I think, that in situations like this, where there is no equivalent tense, or tenses are used differently, there should be an not for it like: the french grammar might use a different tense for this phrase.

Something like that.

Or in other sentenses: 

use a formal phrase

say it im familiar french

These kinds of informations would give information about which kind of words to use.

@ArminZ - D'accord! Merci.