It's in the Past

Dateline: 02/15/99

Let's take a simple sentence in English and see if we can figure out what it means:

When I was a child I went to Disneyland.

Does that sentence refer to a particular trip I took to the Magic Kingdom? Or does it mean that I  frequently went there, much as I might say that when I was a child "I went to school"? Without any context, the sentence is ambiguous, isn't it?

In Spanish, we don't have that ambiguity.

That's because Spanish has two past tenses.¹ This fact can be confusing to some people learning Spanish, because in Spanish there can be two different verb tenses to use in translating a single English verb.

Those two tenses are the preterite (el pretérito) and the imperfect (el imperfecto). (See the standard conjugations near the bottom of the page.) Note that the difference is suggested by their names. The imperfect tense is "imperfect" in that it that is incomplete or not taking place at a particular time. The preterite, on the other hand, refers to an action to which took place at a particular time.

Let's look at two possible Spanish translations for the sentence at the beginning of this article. First, the preterite:

Cuando era un niño fui a Disneyland.

Since the second verb in this sentence is the preterite, it refers to an action that took place at a specific time. Therefore, in English, it would be said in the context of a particular time, such as in "On our vacation when I was in fifth grade I went to Disneyland."

Cuando era un niño iba a Disneyland.

Since this is the imperfect, it refers to an action that took place at no particular time. An example of how this might be used in English would be to say "When I lived in Southern California I (often) went to Disneyland."

Frequently, the imperfect form is translated as "used to." The above sentence could be translated as " When I was a child I used to go to Disneyland." The imperfect form also can often be translated in the "past tense of to be + ...ing" form, indicating an action in progress. "When I lived in Disneyland I was going to Disneyland often." Here are some example sentences of the two tenses:

• Ayer (a specific time) llovió (preterite). Yesterday it rained.
• Iba (imperfect, no definite time) a ir a la piscina, pero llovía (imperfect, no definite time, activity in progress). I was going to the pool, but it was raining.
• Cuando yo comía (imperfect, no specific time, action is incomplete), mi amigo me llamó (preterite, an incident that happened and was completed at a specific time) por teléfono. While I was eating, my friend called me on the phone.
• Cuando yo comía (imperfect, no specific time, action isn't completed), yo charlaba (imperfect, no specific end of action) a mis amigos. While I was eating I chatted with my friends.
• Cuando él hablaba (imperfect, no specific time, action in progress), tropezó (preterite, a completed action) con la alfombra. While he was talking he tripped on the carpet.

Another way to distinguish the two verb forms is to think of preterite as definite and the imperfect as indefinite. Still another way of thinking about it is that the imperfect frequently refers to the background in which some other action takes place. Cuando yo era (imperfect, background of the second clause of the sentence) pobre, compré un Volkswagen. When I was poor I bought a Volkswagen. This is why references to past times require the imperfect. Eran las dos. It was 2 o'clock.

Sometimes a verb can be translated using a different word depending on whether the preterite or imperfect is used. Conocí a María, I met María. Conocía a María, I knew Maria. Meeting María took place at a definite time, but knowing her did not.

Keep those distinctions in mind and you'll be able to keep the tenses straight.

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Regular conjugation

	Preterite	Imperfect
Sample regular conjugation  for -ar verbs	yo compré tú compraste ella compró nosotros compramos3 ellos compraron	yo compraba2 tú comprabas ella compraba nosotros comprábamos ellos compraban
Sample regular conjugation for -ir and -er verbs	yo bebí tú bebiste ella bebió nosotros bebimos ellos bebieron	yo bebía tú bebías ella bebía nosotros bebíamos ellos bebían

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Footnotes

1. To be technical, Spanish has two simple indicative past tenses, the tenses that we usually think of when we talk about the past tense in English. Some other Spanish verb uses could be considered a type of past tense. For example, there is the imperfect subjective used in dependent clauses such as the viniera in Yo esperaba que José viniera, I expected that José would come. There are also various compound tenses that can refer to actions in the past: He comprado, I have bought; yo estaba comprando, I was buying. These forms frequently are learned when learning the simple forms of those auxiliary verbs.) Return to text.

2. Note that the first- and third-person forms in the imperfect are identical for -ar verbs. Return to text.

3. Note that the first-person plural form of the preterite is the same as the present for -ar verbs. Return to text.

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