imperfect or perfect tense ?

Question

im sure this has been asked already but I can't get my head around why imperfect is used for "les festivités commençaient VERS vingt heures" and then past tense is used for "VERS vingt-trois heures trente, tout le monde s'est dirigé vers le terrain de foot" when both sentences says towards a time ???

Jim Jones · Answer

Hi James,"Yesterday, like every year, I went to see the fireworks. The festivities started around 8pm, with the New Year's Eve meal. My sister and I met our friends there and we had a lot of fun! Then around half past eleven, everyone headed for the football [US: soccer] field to be able to admire the fireworks."1) The context in the first sentence is describing a past / background situation which happens regularly.   Imparfait.2) The context of the following sentence describes meeting friends etc but then the group headed off to do something else --  the meeting friends could be thought of as being curtailed / interrupted by the action of heading off to see the fireworks. Perfect tenseDoes this help?Jim

James Watson · Answer

Thank you for your response, that sheds some light on it for sure !

Maarten Kamp · Answer

The first sentence is in passé composé. I put the second sentence into passé composé. From a native French speaker - "Les festivités ont commencé vers huit heures" in this context.

Wouldn't beat myself up over using passé composé here.

Dino Musić · Answer

Super late to this discussion, so don't know if I'll manage to get an answer.
The use of the imparfait would mean that the festivities start at 8pm each year, but to me that seems like an implicit assumption, not strictly supported by the text.
It starts with "Yesterday, like every year, I went to see the fireworks. The festivities started around 8pm"
Yes, it is a habitual action for her to go there, but nothing to me indicates that the festivities starting at 8pm is habitual, so to me the imparfait didn't seem to be the logical choice.
Is my thinking here flawed?