"... bien que je ne sois pas d'accord" vs "... bien que je n'étais pas d'accord"

"Bien que" is always followed by the subjunctive in French and never by the imperfect. You have a choice of subjunctive past or present, though.

So how would you differentiate between "... even though I wasn't ok with it [at the time]" and "... even though I'm not ok with it"?

"bien que je n'étais pas d'accord"     --> bien que je ne fusse pas d'accord.

https://www.cnrtl.fr/concordance/fusse/verbe

Does the above offer help?

Jim

Jim, the subjunctive imperfect is all but dead and not used at all in spoken or contemporary written French. If you want to stress the temporal relation you either use le subjonctif présent or le subjonctif passé.

Yes, sort of, but no one uses the subjunctive perfect, do they? And besides, the sense is imperfect - I was in a state of not being ok with it at the time.

Chris,

Maybe!    But have you looked at the reference I gave Harry where you will see numerous uses of bien que followed by fusse?

Jim

Jim, however many examples of the subjunctive imperfect there are, none of them come from contemporary Fench of a non-literary register. You'd raise eyebrows if you used it in a conversation or normal text.

Harry, you write:

> Yes, sort of, but no one uses the subjunctive perfect, do they? And besides, the sense is > imperfect - I was in a state of not being ok with it at the time.

The subjonctif passé composé is in common use. The subjunctif imparfait is not. So you have to make use of other criteria to decide which one of the two -- either présent or passé composé -- to use. The subjonctif passé is often used to emphasize that one action definitely ended before the other one started.

Thanks to Chris and to Jim. It seems that Chris's last response suits modern French usage, that is "... bien que je ne aie pas été d'accord". I'm still interested in hearing other views.