Grammatica - loco

11
Verbs
186
Onze hond is net doodgegaan, maar ja, hij was dan ook erg
oud.
Our dog (has) just died but then he was very old too.
The imperfect is always used after the conjunction toen ‘when’, which
necessitates the use of the same tense in the main clause:
Hij lag nog altijd in bed toen ik bij hem kwam.
He was still lying in bed when I got to his place.
11.2.2.2
Dutch has its own idiomatic ways of expressing the imperfect continuous
and emphatic, i.e. He was reading a book, He did like fish (see 11.13 and
11.14).
11.2.2.3
There is one imperfect in Dutch which replaces an English pluperfect:
Hij lag er al uren toen ik bij hem kwam.
He had been lying there for hours when I got to his place.
Here, as with the present tense (see Present Tense, 11.2.1.3), the action
of the first clause is seen as still continuing when the action of the second
occurs and thus an imperfect must be used for the first action; a pluperfect
(in Dutch) would imply that he was no longer lying there when I arrived,
but that he had been lying there.
11.2.2.4
Two variant forms of the imperfect in English which often cause confusion
are those indicating habit or custom which employ the auxiliaries ‘used
to’ and ‘would’:
We used to live in Amsterdam.
When we lived in Amsterdam we would often go to the National
Museum.
In the first example the Dutch use either the imperfect or the perfect and
express the habitual aspect with the adverb of time vroeger ‘previously,
formerly’:
Wij woonden vroeger in Amsterdam.
Wij hebben vroeger in Amsterdam gewoond.