Grammatical tense expressing actions that took place or were completed in the past.
12
votes
6answers
276 views
No supo la respuesta
Why do people say things like:
Se lo pregunté, pero no supo la respuesta
Sabía seems more natural to me, and I've been told that either is fine, but I'm still a bit fuzzy on why somebody would ...
8
votes
3answers
389 views
Words that mean different things in the preterite
There are some verbs that seem to have quite distinct meanings in the preterite tense. I don't know whether they also seem to change meanings to native speakers or if it just seems completely natural ...
6
votes
2answers
342 views
Why does the preterite of “traducir” transform into “tradujo”?
As you will see below the preterite suffers from an odd transformation. Even native speakers make the mistake of conjugating the preterite of traducir wrong. For instance instead of traduje they ...
4
votes
3answers
205 views
“s” final en tiempo pretérito indefinido: -aste(s), -iste(s)
Español
La segunda persona singular del pretérito indefinido generalmente termina en "-aste" o "-iste". En muchos lugares, la gente agrega una "s" final a estas palabras (por ejemplo, hablastes en ...
4
votes
5answers
671 views
Expressing past belief (creí vs. creía vs. pensé vs. pensaba)
When expressing in Spanish something that you believed or thought in the past, there are four options:
Creí que ...
Creía que ...
Pensé que ...
Pensaba que ...
I learned that creía que was the ...
3
votes
2answers
85 views
“Something happened” while “something else was going on”
¿Cuál es correcto?
No ví nada mientras estaba corriendo.
o
No ví nada mientras corrí.
¿Ambos son incorrectos?
Lo siento por el título.
3
votes
2answers
76 views
Can someone help deconstruct the sentence “Hicieron usted su tarea para hoy?”
A possible translation of the sentence "Hicieron usted su tarea para hoy?" could be:
Did you do your homework (for) today?
That said, hicieron is the preterit of hacer for third person plural, ...
3
votes
4answers
157 views
¿Cómo se usa el antepretérito?
En clase hemos estado repasando el tiempo pluscuamperfecto. En todos los ejemplos que vimos, usaron el imperfecto del verbo haber. Cuando pregunté a mi profesor sobre el pretérito de haber, nos dijo ...
3
votes
0answers
56 views
Verbos en pasado que tienen una “s” extra al final [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
“s” final en tiempo pretérito: -aste(s), -iste(s)
He visto que en algunos países, especialmente centroamericanos, terminan los verbos en segunda persona ...
2
votes
2answers
279 views
Spanish names for preterite and imperfect tenses
In school, I learned that the Spanish past tenses were called preterite and imperfect in English, and preterito and imperfecto in Spanish. However, in talking to native speakers I've run across other ...
2
votes
1answer
108 views
Should I use preterit or imperfect to express something that used to happen repeatedly?
For example, if I wanted to say "They used to travel every day", which would I use:
Ellos viajaron cada día.
Ellos viajaban cada día.
