How is preterite tense used in spanish

More on Stem-Changing Verbs. Comprehensive Review. Ayer cocinamos paella para mi familia. Subject Ser to be Ir to go Dar to give Ver to see yo fui. Seeing Double Note that ser and ir have the exact same forms in the preterite. Ben y Cristina se casaron. Looking for the old quiz? SpanishDict is the world's most popular Spanish-English dictionary, translation, and learning website. Mand o una carta. I send a letter. Siempre cocinamos paella los domingos. We always cook paella on Sundays.

Hopefully you can now distinguish the differences between all five tenses and how they are used to speak about the past. The exact strategies you need to become conversational in Spanish this year. Join the course now, before we come to our senses and charge for it! Learn more here. You already have a BaseLang account. Please go to web. We had problems creating your account. Please contact support. Get our free email course, Shortcut to Conversational.

Select basic ads. Create a personalised ads profile. Select personalised ads. Apply market research to generate audience insights. Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Share Flipboard Email. Gerald Erichsen. Spanish Language Expert. Gerald Erichsen is a Spanish language expert who has created Spanish lessons for ThoughtCo since Updated November 14, The imperfect is used to refer to an action that doesn't have a specific ending.

Here are some more specific uses to clarify the differences between the two tenses. Note that the imperfect is frequently translated in ways other than the English simple past. The preterite often spelled "preterite is used to tell of something that happened once:. It can also tell of something that happened more than once but with a specific end:.

Finally, the preterite can indicate the beginning or end of a process:. On the other hand, the imperfect tells of past habitual or repeated actions where there's no definite end specified. The imperfect can describe a condition, mental state, or state of being from the past:. To describe an action that occurred over an unspecified time:.

To indicate time or age in the past:. The imperfect is frequently used to provide the background for an event that is described using the preterite. Because of the way the two tenses are used, some verbs can be translated using differing words in English depending on the tense in Spanish.

This is especially true when the preterite is used to indicate the beginning or end of a process.