Jécrivais

J’écrivais is the first-person singular imperfect form of the French verb écrire, meaning “I was writing” or “I wrote,” depending on context. It is used to describe a past action that was ongoing, repeated, or serves as background in narration.

Conjugation and form: The imperfect endings in French are -ais, -ais, -ait, -ions, -iez, -aient. For écrire the stem is écriv-; therefore the forms are j’écrivais, tu écrivais, il/elle écrivait, nous écrivions, vous écriviez, ils écrivaient. Because it begins with a vowel, the pronoun je becomes j’ in the written form: j’écrivais.

Usage: The imperfect is used to indicate actions in the past without focusing on their completion. It describes ongoing activities, habitual past actions, or background details during a narrative. It contrasts with the passé composé, which marks completed past actions, and with the passé simple in more formal or literary texts.

Examples:

- J’écrivais une lettre quand le téléphone a sonné. (I was writing a letter when the phone rang.)

- Quand j’étais jeune, j’écrivais tous les jours. (When I was young, I used to write every day.)

- Il disait qu’il écrivait des poèmes chaque semaine. (He said he was writing poems every week.)

Relation to related forms: J’écrivais comes from the verb écrire, which means “to write.” The imperfect form shares a common irregular root pattern with other tenses of écrire, even though the imperfect itself uses regular endings. The root and form reflect a broader Latin origin, related to other words such as script, scribe, and describe in various Romance languages.