past tense or be+ -ing

Depends. Do you want to describe the ongoing action of having walked while other things were happening, or do you just want her to walk so she can reach a destination? "Walking" sets the stage for other things to happen while she walks, and "walked" just moves her from A to B.
She was walking with a friend when it started to rain.
But:
She walked with a friend to the train station, then hugged him goodbye.

But "taking her hand" isn't a good choice here because taking someone's hand is a very quickly completed action. Unless something happens during the hand-taking. So I'd use "who took her hand", unless you want to say "who was holding her hand".

I don't know how clear or correct this is, but it's how I've learned it.

As ravioli explained, English makes the same differentiation in past actions; even the terms: passe simple and imperfect are the same in both languages.

I feel so smart for having explained something I don't even understand, because your comment just fried my brain. I've always sucked at naming or explaining grammar. I just write. Man, I even got fail grades in my native language while winning writing competitions... lol.

I'm not sure I can parse King Neptune's comment either, and I'm pretty good at grammar.

Your Royal Oceanic Highness, can you please rephrase your comment? I think you're trying to say that English simple past is like the French passé composé, and the English imperfect is like the French imperfect. If that is the case, yes, that's pretty much true. But beware! Idiom varies between languages, and something that makes technical grammatical sense can sound wrong to native ears.

Ravioli's explanation is a good one. Looking at it as a comparison between the continuous action of walking and the single, completed action of taking a hand works well. But Sweetix, you may need a native English speaker or someone with very good non-native English to do a beta read on your work. The line between those two verb forms is so much about idiom rather than rules that it can be hard to choose right.

(Says someone who messes up verb forms all the time in her current second language. This stuff is hard, yo.)

Edited to Add:
In case you don't know (no one has said it explicitly), you can mix past tenses in English. "They were walking together when he took her hand."

Sweetix said:

Hello,
I have a grammatical question, because my first language isn't English and I am doubting about it.
In a text written with past tense, do we say « She was walking with a friend who was taking her hand » or « She walked with a friend who took her hand » ? Because in French, we use two different tenses when we are writing with past tense so I am a little confused. Can anyone explain to me, please?

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Both tenses can work in English. If you'd post an entire paragraph to show how that particular statement is positioned in the text, then it would be easier to give you an accurate answer.

If you're writing in past tense, then the usual form of the statement would be "She walked with a friend who took her hand."

However, if you're writing in past tense, and a character is verbally recounting something, it would usually be: "She was walking with a friend who took her hand," she said".

Think of it as layers. Layer one is generally simple; deeper layers (like dialogue) get more complex.

Sweetix said:

Hello,
I have a grammatical question, because my first language isn't English and I am doubting about it.
In a text written with past tense, do we say « She was walking with a friend who was taking her hand » or « She walked with a friend who took her hand » ? Because in French, we use two different tenses when we are writing with past tense so I am a little confused. Can anyone explain to me, please?

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It depends on context. The walked and took verb conjugations are simple past, while the helper verb "was" or "were" with an "ing" ending creates past continuous, for an action that takes place in an ongoing sense, over time, often while something else occurs to interrupt the action (though not always).

In general, simple past like walked and took would denote an action that began and ended within a defined time frame, before anything else of note occurred in the scene.

If you are describing an action where both actions began and ended as the scene is described, then you would say, "She walked with her friend, and the friend took her hand."

This implies that she walked, the walk ended, then the friend took her hand.

Now if you want to imply that the walk took place over time and the taking of the hand occurred at a set time during the walk, you'd use past continuous for walk (walking), and simple past for for take (took). So: "While she was walking, her friend took her hand."

If you want to imply that both actions were continuous or ongoing when something else happened, you'd use past continuous for both. This is most often used when something interrupts or punctuates the action, though there are other uses too. I can't think of a non awkward example for this particular case, since taking of a hand isn't an action one can sustain over time. Holding hands is, however.

They spent the day walking in the park, holding hands.

This implies both the walking and holding took place over a sustained time period. The focus is on the actions as they unfolded

or

While they were walking in the park and holding hands, a rabbit burst from the bushes in front of them.

This focuses on an ongoing action that was interrupted by another.


Compare to:

They walked in the park and held hands yesterday.

Both actions are over and we're focusing on them as a snapshot of the past.

evilrooster said:

I'm not sure I can parse King Neptune's comment either, and I'm pretty good at grammar.

Your Royal Oceanic Highness, can you please rephrase your comment? I think you're trying to say that English simple past is like the French passé composé, and the English imperfect is like the French imperfect. If that is the case, yes, that's pretty much true. But beware! Idiom varies between languages, and something that makes technical grammatical sense can sound wrong to native ears.

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As I tried to explain earlier, l'imparfait en francais and the imperfect in English are grammatically the same, and passe simple en francais and the simple past tense in English are similar.

Ravioli's explanation is a good one. Looking at it as a comparison between the continuous action of walking and the single, completed action of taking a hand works well. But Sweetix, you may need a native English speaker or someone with very good non-native English to do a beta read on your work. The line between those two verb forms is so much about idiom rather than rules that it can be hard to choose right.

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Yes, Ravioli did an excellent job.

And one of the nice things about French is that the grammar is very similar to English grammar. If in doubt use the form that would work in the other language, and you'll be right most of the time.

Roxxsmom said:

Now if you want to imply that the walk took place over time and the taking of the hand occurred at a set time during the walk, you'd use past continuous for walk (walking), and simple past for for take (took). So: "While she was walking, her friend took her hand."

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The past-continuous tense is not always necessary to convey ongoing actions, so you could also use simple past forms of both verbs.

"Her friend took her hand as they walked."

King Neptune said:

Yes, Ravioli did an excellent job.

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Aww

King Neptune said:

And one of the nice things about French is that the grammar is very similar to English grammar.

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Yes, when explained by teachers and text books, both make me cry.

Ravioli said:

Yes, when explained by teachers and text books, both make me cry.

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I agree.