داشتم می‌رفتم

An Action in Progress in the Past

Level 4

داشتم + می‌خواندم. Both ـم endings refer to the same speaker.

How It Works

Match the people. Say داشتم می‌رفتم, داشتی می‌رفتی, داشت می‌رفت, داشتیم می‌رفتیم, داشتید می‌رفتید, and داشتند می‌رفتند. The two finite verbs refer to the same subject.

Add a past reference point. وقتی تماس گرفتی، داشتم غذا می‌پختم puts cooking in progress when the call happened. The call supplies a point inside the unfolding activity; it does not say that the cooking was completed.

Compare a habit. آن سال هر روز پیاده می‌رفتم describes a repeated routine. There is no need to insert داشتم into each habit. A plain می‌ past form can also describe background, so interpret the sentence rather than assigning it only one English tense.

Iranian use. The داشتن progressive is common in Iranian conversation and also appears in written narratives. Informal plural endings may reduce, such as داشتن می‌رفتن for written داشتند می‌رفتند; label those forms as everyday Iranian.

Examples (4)

  1. وقتی تماس گرفتی، داشتم غذا می‌پختم.

    When you called, I was cooking.

  2. سارا داشت از خانه بیرون می‌رفت.

    Sara was leaving the house.

  3. داشتیم دربارهٔ سفر حرف می‌زدیم.

    We were talking about the trip.

    The compound حرف زدن keeps its nonverbal part with the می‌ verb.

  4. آن سال هر روز پیاده می‌رفتم.

    That year I used to walk every day.

    A habit is expressed with a plain می‌ past form here.

How It Connects

Tap a pattern to see what it builds on and what it leads to.

داشتم می‌رفتمLevel 4An Action in Progress in the Past

Learn This First

Recognize the imperfective past verb in the second part. Understand matching auxiliary and lexical verbs before shifting the construction into the past.