Preterite vs Imperfect: The Event and the Background

What does the imperfect do?

The imperfect describes. ¡Chévere!, an open university Spanish course, says it gives the background of a story and that the order of its events often doesn't matter. It covers habits, actions in progress, and what things were like, often where English says "used to."

Sabía is the same form for "I" and "he" or "she," so No sabía can mean I, he or she; the translation here picks he. Niño is for a boy; if you were a girl, say niña, and Wiktionary gives the same -o to -a change for enfermo and enferma. Read the table out loud once. Then cover the middle column and say each sentence from the English.

What does the preterite do?

The preterite tells what happened. ¡Chévere! says it moves a story forward and shows one action finished before the next began. Its list also has some uses you might not expect.

In the cut-in row, se cortó is the preterite and cocinaba is the imperfect. One sentence can hold both tenses.

How do the two fit in one story?

¡Chévere! sets out three ways to combine them. Each one tells the listener something different about time.

The first means the band was playing while the aunt and uncle felt nostalgic. The second is a chain: she got up, the heel broke, she fell. The third has the cousin dancing when her boyfriend arrived. For a chain, ¡Chévere! stresses telling the events in the order they happened.

Say all three out loud. Then swap the order of the chain and hear how the story changes.

Where does "event and background" break?

The shortcut on this page is a summary. FSI's 1959 course calls the two past tenses one English idea split into two Spanish ones, the same way it treats ser and estar. Here is where the shortcut leads you wrong.

A long stretch told as finished. Ten years of living abroad sounds like background. But ¡Chévere! lists "for a specific amount of time" and "completed action" under the preterite, so you say Viví diez años en el extranjero. The stretch doesn't need a number: Llovió todo el día. (It rained all day long.) is one finished stretch too. The imperfect is for a stretch used as the scene for something else, like cuando era niño. A number alone doesn't switch the tense: ¡Chévere! keeps age and clock time in the imperfect, so tenía 13 años stays imperfect. Viví diez años is a stretch of living, told as finished, not an age.

Habits against counted times. Repeated actions take the imperfect: La artista siempre pintaba sola. Once you count them as a total, they take the preterite: Fui dos veces. A count inside a habit still takes the imperfect: Jenny lavaba la pared de la cocina dos veces al año. (Jenny washed the kitchen wall twice a year.)

Key words are hints. ¡Chévere! gives words that often go with each tense, such as siempre and todos los días for the imperfect, and ayer and anoche for the preterite. It also lists nunca with the imperfect, yet its own example says La chica se sentía cohibida en las fiestas y nunca quiso bailar. (The girl felt shy at parties and never wanted to dance.) The verb is in the preterite, so nunca didn't force the imperfect. Use the words as a first guess, then ask what the verb is doing.

Weather. Hacía mucho frío. sets a scene. Anoche hizo mucho frío. tells the cold as one finished stretch, last night. ¡Chévere! lists the preterite of hacer for weather that starts, or that lasts a set amount of time. Anoche doesn't force it, though: Anoche hacía tanto frío que no pude dormir. (It was so cold last night that I couldn't sleep.) uses the cold as the scene for not sleeping. No pude is the preterite, the table's "didn't manage to" below, not the imperfect no podía.

Which verbs change meaning?

Some verbs name a state, not an action. ¡Chévere! says these change meaning between the two tenses. It gives a table.

These are ¡Chévere!'s readings, not the only ones; Tatoeba's Quise pagar is plain "wanted." Quiso is he, she or you (formal); for I, it's quise, so "I refused" is no quise. The nunca quiso line further up keeps the book's "never wanted"; don't carry this row's "refused" over to it. ¡Chévere! also notes that haber in this sense stays singular, hubo and había, even when there's more than one thing. ¡Chévere! glosses the estar example as Mom getting angry when the family threw her a surprise party. Don't read every estuve as "got," though. Tatoeba has Estuve enfermo ayer. for "I was ill yesterday." A woman talking about herself says enferma. ¡Chévere! adds that ponerse works the same way: Tom se puso nervioso. is Tom getting nervous.

What are the forms?

You need these before the drill. The endings come from ¡Chévere!.

Watch the written accents. Hablo is "I speak," and habló is "he spoke." The "first person plural" preterite of regular -ar and -ir verbs looks just like the present, so context tells them apart: Nosotros siempre llamamos a mamá los domingos. is a habit now, and Nosotros llamamos a mamá el domingo pasado. is last Sunday.

Only three verbs are irregular in the imperfect, says ¡Chévere!: ser (era), ir (iba) and ver (veía). The preterite has more. Wiktionary gives ir and ser the same forms, fui and fue, and lists hice for hacer and tuve for tener. Some -ir verbs change their stem in the "he" and "they" forms: Wiktionary gives pidió and pidieron for pedir. An -ar verb like pensar keeps its stem: pensó. Check any verb in the conjugation lookup. In the "I" form, verbs ending in -car, -gar and -zar change spelling: busqué, pagué, empecé.

¡Chévere! marks the vosotros forms as used only in Spain. Trayectos, an open course from COERLL, uses vos for familiar "you" in Argentina and Uruguay. Wiktionary gives vos its own forms in the present but none in these two tenses, and Tatoeba has lines like ¿Vos usaste mi cámara? (Did you use my camera?) with the same form as the second row. If the people you'll talk to use vos, copy their forms.

How do you train the choice out loud?

FSI's Spanish course from 1982 drills the two tenses as a pair. It asks ¿Traía Ud. a los niños antes? (Did you use to bring the children?) and answers No, antes no los traía. (No, I didn't use to bring them.) then Ayer los traje por primera vez. (Yesterday I brought them for the first time.) The question asks about you, but the answers speak as I: traje is "I brought," and the form for you (formal) is trajo. The first is a habit that wasn't there. The second is one event. Use the same frame.

Start with regular verbs, such as tomar café or comer tacos. Say the pair about yourself: "I didn't use to drink coffee. Yesterday I drank it for the first time." Then say it about a friend, then about two people. For a friend, the imperfect stays the same as for you (tomaba) and only the preterite changes (tomé to tomó). For two people, both change: tomaban, tomaron. In the third frame, use the -ndo form after estaba: tomando, comiendo. For two people, estaba becomes estaban; the verb after cuando follows whoever did the cutting in. When you've done every person, pick a new verb. Look up each new verb in all its forms before you say it, since the "he" and "they" forms can change even when "I" looks regular.

Count it in Spoken Minutes. On a 5-minute day, spend 1 minute on yesterday's Cold Say-Back and 4 on the frames. On a 10-minute day, it's 2 and 8. On a 20-minute day, it's 3 on the Cold Say-Back, 10 on the frames and 7 on the self-test below, run twice. Skip the self-test on shorter days. On your first day there's nothing to say back yet, so the Cold Say-Back minutes go to the frames; on a 20-minute day the self-test still runs. This split and the drill are this site's House routine, untested with learners. Add the minutes to your Mile Log.

On a 20-minute day, say each line in Spanish before you read the note after it.

1. When I arrived, it was raining. (imperfect for the scene, preterite for the arrival)
2. I lived abroad for ten years. (preterite, a set length)
3. The artist always painted alone. (imperfect, a habit)
4. I went twice. (preterite, counted times)
5. It was seven thirty. (imperfect, clock time: Eran las siete y media.)
6. I met an old woman. (preterite of conocer, a first meeting: Conocí a una anciana. Keep the a before a person.)
7. Tom got nervous. (preterite, a state starting)

If you miss one, don't reread the rule. Find the sentence in the tables and say it three times.

These choices sit next to others that English hides, like ser and estar, por and para and the subjunctive. If you're just starting, the Spanish starting plan shows where past tenses fit.

Tomorrow, before you look at anything, run a Cold Say-Back: say that it was raining when you arrived, that you lived somewhere for some years, and that you met someone, with the a before the person.