“We we’re driving...” Nous conduisions or Nous étions conduire? Merci!
Answered! Jump to accepted answer.

Cécile
Kwiziq language super star
29/07/18
It is -
Nous conduisions .
Anna
Kwiziq community member
29/07/18
Chris
Kwiziq community member
29/07/18
Nous étions conduire doesn't mean anything. It is a literal translation from English which simply has nomparallel in French.
-- Chris.
Chris
Kwiziq community member
29/07/18
Nous étions conduire doesn't mean anything. It is a literal translation from English which simply has nomparallel in French.
-- Chris.
Anna
Kwiziq community member
29/07/18
Mais no! :-)
if it means nothing, then why does it show up in Conjugate être in L'Imparfait (imperfect tense)
Merci
Anna
Kwiziq community member
29/07/18
Chris
Kwiziq community member
31/07/18
Nous étions -- We were.
Nous conduisons. -- We drive / we are driving.
Nous conduisions. -- We were driving / we used to drive.
Nous avions conduit -- We had driven / we had been driving.
Nous avons conduit. -- We drove.
Grammatically, you never use the infinitive (conduire) after an auxiliary verb (être) in a compound tense.
Also, the English continuous form (-ing form) does not have a one-to-one correspondence in French.
-- Chris.
Anna
Kwiziq community member
31/07/18
Anna
Kwiziq community member
31/07/18
Your answer
Don't have an account yet? Join today

Think you've got all the answers?
Test your French to the CEFR standard
find your French level »
Anna
Kwiziq community member
28 July 2018
9 replies
“We we’re driving...” Nous conduisions or Nous étions conduire? Merci!
Were not we’re
This question relates to:
French lesson "Conjugate regular verbs in L'Imparfait (imperfect tense)"