Past Tense in spanish

There are two ways to do past tense in spanish: imperfect and preterite.

Imperfect

In general, a good way to think about the imperfect tense is that it expresses something without a definite clear ending or beginning, unlike the preterite.

Use cases for the imperfect tense:

• To express the age that someone was
• To express an action in the past that was interrupted by another action starting in the past.
• To tell a past time
• To describe actions, circumstances that existed in the past without a definite duration
• To describe physical conditions in the past
• To express emotions or mental states in the past
• To express repeated actions in the past, in a manner similar to the english used to
• To refer to the future with ir in the imperfect tense: iba a correr: I was going to run

Conjugation

Regular Verbs:

• miraba
• mirabas
• miraba
• mirábamos
• mirabais
• miraban

• vendía
• vendías
• vendía
• vendíamos
• vendíais
• vendían

• vivía
• vivías
• vivía
• vivíamos
• vivíais
• vivían

Irregulars

• iba
• ibas
• iba
• íbamos
• ibais
• iban

• era
• eras
• era
• éramos
• erais
• eran

• veía
• veías
• veía
• veíamos
• veíais
• veían

Preterite

You would use the preterite tense to express an action that was completed in the past.

Regular verbs:

mirar

• miré
• miraste
• miró
• miramos
• mirasteis
• miraron

vender

• vendí
• vendiste
• vendió
• vendimos
• vendisteis
• vendieron

vivir

• viví
• viviste
• vivió
• vivimos
• vivisteis
• vivieron

Irregulars (no accents on any of the irregulars)

SiMbA ChEaTeD!

This is a good memnonic for remembering whether to use the preterite or the imperfect: