It's a little unclear, but I think you're saying in this lesson that in English we couldn't use an imperfect tense, but although it might be less common, I've certainly heard people say things like "I wasn't finding my keys" to mean that they had been looking unsuccessfully but now had found them.
English Imperfect
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R Z.Kwiziq Q&A regular contributor
English Imperfect
This question relates to:Spanish lesson "Verbs ver, oír, escuchar, oler, sentir, encontrar in the imperfect"
Asked 4 years ago
A G.Kwiziq Q&A regular contributor
Interesting. Here in the Southern US, your example (“wasn’t finding my keys”) sounds terribly awkward and non-native to me.
R Z.Kwiziq Q&A regular contributor
It's not usual, but think about it in a context like "sorry I'm late, I wasn't finding my keys". Coming also from (technically) the South as well (although true Southerners would I'm sure disown Northern Virginia at this point) I agree that it's not common, I'm just suggesting that it's not unheard of either.
Missy E.Kwiziq Q&A regular contributor
Sounds like slang that has creeped into our language from the younger generations within the last 10-20 years. It sounds bad, I've heard it quite often on tv but no one in my age group would say that. Hopefully it will phase out but as always something worse will take its place.
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