

It is possible to translate the imperfecto to English in many different ways. We used to go to the park every day in the summer.ĭe niña, mi madre me leía libros antes de dormir.Īs a girl, my mother read books to me before going to sleep.īoth examples above show events or actions that happened habitually. Íbamos al parque todos los días en el verano. talk about a habitual state, event or action in the past We will now go over the five main uses of imperfecto mentioned above. *Note that the conjugations for yo, él, ella and usted, are the same ( yo comía, ella comía). For verbs ending in -ER and -IR, all of the new endings include ía.
Spanish verb endings for mi amigos plus#
For regular verbs ending in -AR, the endings all include aba plus the particular endings for each person. Unlike the pretérito indefinido, there are few irregular conjugations. The formation of Spanish verbs in imperfecto is quite straightforward.

Verbs ending in -GAR: when verbs end in -GAR in their infinitive form just like: “abrigar, agregar, ahogar, albergar, apagar, colgar”, the verb will be conjugated differently for the first person (the pronoun YO), so we will replace -GAR for -GUÉ as in the sentences “Y o pagué las cuentas” and “Yo colgué la ropa“.For the pronoun “YO”, the -IR part will be replaced by “Í” with tilde as in “Yo concluí” and for “ÉL” and “ELLOS”, we will add the consonant “y” as in “Él construyó” and “Ellos cayeron”. Verbs with two vowels in their ending: verbs like “ leer, oír, concluir, incluir, constituir, construir, disminuir, fluir, poseer, caer, huir” suffer a spelling change for the pronouns YO, ÉL and ELLOS.There are many other irregular verbs and special cases in the past tense in Spanish besides the above-mentioned.: Other special cases in the preterite in Spanish


SER: Yo fui, tú fuiste, él fue, nosotros fuimos, vosotros fuisteis, ellos fueron. Keep two things in mind first, the endings used for –ER and –IR verbs like COMER and ABRIR are identical, and second, the conjugations for the pronouns YO, ÉL, ELLA and USTED in the preterite tense will always use a tilde over the last vowel for regular verbs. Know that you will also find irregular verbs in the past tense.Īs you can see in the chart below, the stem of regular verbs in the past tense in Spanish will not change at all for most verbs, only their ending. Verbs in the preterite tense in Spanish will change just the same way verbs in the present tense do, depending on the subject of the sentence. Just like in English, the preterite or past tense will be used for actions that happened at some time in the past and have already finished. We can refer to the past tense in Spanish as “ El pretérito perfecto simple”, “El pretérito indefinido” or simply as “El pasado simple”. Let’s start The past tense of regular verbs in Spanish As usual, you will find simple explanations, many examples of sentences and interactive quizzes to test yourself. In this lesson, we will learn the basic rules to conjugate both regular and irregular verbs in the preterite tense in Spanish properly. In everyday interactions, it is very common to find ourselves talking about past events in Spanish, things that happened recently or a long time ago.
