In English, to express something that took place in the past, there are several options. For example: I walked, I was walking, I did walk, I had walked. Or if I had planned on it, but it didn't work out: I was going to walk.
In French there are more. The passe compose, the imparfait, the plus-que parfait, the conditionel passe, the subjonctif passe. Aside from these, there are four more that are only used in literature. Encoced in the meaning of these tenses is duration of time, relation in time to other past events, and mood.
Hebrew on the other hand, has one past tense- only one! That makes it nice for a beginning student. Also the endings are regular. One still has the variations of the seven different benyanim (and we've really only learned pa'al) But still, this should be less challanging than french... More to come on Hebrew past tense- I still haven't figured out how to post in Hebrew characters...
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