In Italian, imperfect tense is simple past tense for describing actions that were repeated in the past or actions that last for indefinite time.
In English, we call the same as the continuous past. Examples of the tense in English are as follows:
1. He was listening to songs.
2. We were watching shows on the television.
3. Every Sunday, they worked.
Sentence 3 shows that the action was also repeated once before.
In Italian, it is quite easy to make the tense as all it needs is a set of endings to be added to the verbs at the endings. You can even spot the similarities in the table below:
| parlare | Scrivere |
| parlavo††(I was speaking) | scrivevo †††††(I was writing) |
| parlavi | scrivevi |
| parlava | scriveva |
| parlavamo | scrivevamo |
| parlavate | scrivevate |
| parlavano | scrivevano |
You would notice that each verb uses endings such as -vo, -vi, -va, -vamo, -vate, -vano.
Some exceptions are of ‘esser’:
| Esser |
| Ero(I have) |
| Eri |
| Era |
| Eravamo |
| Eravate |
| Erano |