#Spanish past tense movie

⇒ Group 1: 100% Irregular verbs – Spanish pretérito indefinido The easiest way to learn them is to divide them into 3 groups: The Spanish pretérito indefinido is formed by taking the infinitive, removing the -ar, -er, -ir and adding a specific ending for each person: Spanish pretérito indefinido regular conjugationįor example: Spanish pretérito indefinido example of regular conjugation Irregular conjugation – Spanish pretérito indefinidoĪs I mentioned before, the Spanish pretérito indefinido has a lot of irregularities in its conjugation. Let’s have a closer look at the regular and irregular conjugation of the Spanish pretérito indefinido: Regular conjugation – Spanish pretérito indefinido It is challenging, but I always encourage my students to think that any conjugation will be easier after this Its conjugation is one of the most complicated in Spanish, as there are a lot of irregular verbs in the conjugation of this past tense. The Spanish Pretérito indefinido is one of the 3+1 Spanish past tenses. In this article, we will focus on the use and conjugation of the pretérito indefinido. The best advice I can give to you to learn past tenses: do it step by step. To choose the right past tense, you have to consider when the action took place (Was it today or yesterday? Was it this week or last week?) and also if you want to talk about main actions or descriptions.Īs a very general rule, we use pretérito perfecto and pretérito indefinido for actions in the past while we use pretérito imperfecto for descriptions of people, places, objects, and situations in the past. It will depend on the context.īut it’s not all bad news, instead of trying to find translations from one language to another, we can look at the usage of the past tenses and REALLY understand: I know that at this point the only question you have on your mind is: ‘Ok, but what is that in English?’ Sorry, but I have some bad news for you: as I said before, there is no direct translation to English past tenses. Pretérito means ‘past’ in Spanish grammar. So let’s keep it as a bonus for when we have mastered the 3 main past tenses.Įach past tense has its own name (useful when learning grammar and looking for exercises) but all of them start with the same word: pretérito. I say +1 because one can be avoided or changed to another past tense in most of the cases. Descriptions in the past in Spanishįinally, the imperfect tense will also be used to make descriptions of situations, people or things in the past in Spanish, particularly for talking about age, dates, events, emotions or things that we had or felt for some time in the past, but are different in the present.Before studying each Spanish past tense individually and using them in combination, it is important to have a quick overview. This way, instead of “ Marta miraba…” we could say “ Marta estaba mirando la película…”. Likewise, if we wanted to use a different structure, then instead of using the imperfect tense for actions in progress, we could use the past progressive tense in Spanish. In order to strictly mean “got home”, we could use the simple past of the verb LLEGAR instead of the imperfect form, just like this: “ Marta miraba la película cuando Alejandro llegó a casa”.

#Spanish past tense movie

This sentence tells us that she was watching the movie either “while Alejandro was coming home” or “when Alejandro got home”. As for the second sentence, we used the imperfect past tense in Spanish to represent two simultaneous actions: “ miraba” and “ llegaba”. In the first sentence, which is written in the simple past, Marta watched the film, but maybe she is doing something different now, meaning that the action is over. Marta watched the movie when Alejandro came home Look at the picture below and notice how –AR, -ER and –IR ending verbs are conjugated in the imperfect past tense in Spanish: The endings for verbs in the imperfect tense will be different to those from the simple past tense in Spanish. First, we need to modify the verb’s ending, depending on both the sentence’s subject and its original ending in infinitive form. Just like in other tenses, verbs in the imperfect past tense in Spanish will follow specific conjugation rules. Conjugation rules for verbs in the imperfect past tense in Spanish Let’s learn more about this interesting topic. On the other hand, the imperfect past tense in Spanish if used for repeated actions from the past or those that were performed simultaneously, for example: “Ella caminaba por el bosque y cantaba su canción favorita” (She walked through the forest singing her favorite song). “El pretérito perfecto” refers to actions in the past that have already been completed such as “Trabajé ahí” (I worked there). The past tense in Spanish has two basic forms: “ El pretérito perfecto” and “ El pretérito imperfecto”.