8 When a sentence refers to two or more events which happened in the past,
it is helpful to think in terms of ‘foreground’ and ‘background’, as in these
two English examples: ‘While I was doing the dishes [continuous back-
ground], I heard [foreground] the doorbell’; ‘I saw [foreground] Juve a couple
of times when I was [continuous background] in Turin’. In Italian, in cases
like these, the imperfect expresses the continuous ‘background’ action against
which the ‘foreground’ action is seen to occur:
- Note that mentre (while), in the past, is always followed by the imperfect.
If the two events happened at the same time and lasted for the same length of
time, then both verbs are in the imperfect:
Mentre* dormivate ho preparato la
colazione.
Mia madre ha conosciuto mio padre
quando abitava a Firenze.
Mauro non ha preso l’ombrello
anche se pioveva.
Marco ha telefonato quando eravate
al cinema.
Non sono uscita perché pioveva.While you were sleeping/asleep I
prepared breakfast.
My mother met my father when she
was living in Florence.
Mauro didn’t take the umbrella even
though it was raining.
Marco phoned when you were at the
cinema.
I didn’t go out because it was raining.Mentre noi facevamo il compito di
matematica, Carla ripassava
filosofia.
Mentre Alessandro preparava la
cena, Claudia leggeva il giornale.Quando io lavoravo al
supermercato, mia sorella
lavorava in un cinema.While we were doing our maths
homework, Carla was revising
philosophy.
While Alessandro was preparing
dinner, Claudia was reading the
newspaper.
When I worked in the supermarket,
my sister worked in a cinema.Il gatto miagolava perché aveva
fame.The cat was miaowing because it was
hungry.