However, none of them are going to be a good excuse. There are a number of reasons for this apprehension, ranging from the imperfect/preterite debate from earlier, the number of accented vowels involved in producing the preterite, and even the large number of irregular verbs. Forming the PreteriteĪgain, a lot of non-natives tend to be afraid of the preterite, but it is a great chance to show off how much Spanish someone actually knows. The Spanish Civil War lasted for years, during which the Nazis bombed Guernica. I took a test last week, but studied for a month before. The one that would be in the preterite in Spanish has been put in bold to help make it easier to recognize when to use this tense: In each of the following pairs of clauses, one verb should be in the preterite, and one should note. Examples of Knowing When to Use the Preterite perfect, so events that had a definite beginning and end have to use the preterite. After all, each of these is a finite event in sequence, so it makes sense to do so.Īdditionally, if a shorter action is complete, use the preferite.įor a quick way to remember this, remember that the imperfect is not complete, i.e. If someone is describing a series of events in the past, then the preterite is the tense to use. In short, for those who really want to know Spanish well, the preterite is a fact of life, and a vital simple past tense.Īlso, there are two other times where the preterite is especially useful. However, while native speakers will be sympathetic to anyone trying to speak, it sounds a bit like someone who forms the future tense in English by saying ‘he is going + infinitive’ all the time without understanding how to use the word ‘will.’ Sure, it gets the point across, but there’s a better way. In that case, it may come down to simply having been exposed to enough of the language to know what is going on.įor example, one may use the preterite to express having gone to summer camp once, but will use the imperfect to describe the action of going canoeing every day while at summer camp.įor many Spanish learners, there is a temptation to rely more on the imperfect, because it is the easier simple past tense to form. Obviously, there can be some overlap here. Likewise, his childhood would likely be referred to in the imperfect, but the act of having a first day of school is definitely spoken about in the preterite. One may have ‘used to gone’ to school, but she likely only graduated once. However, if one needs a Spanish past tense that describes an occurrence where something was shorter or more finite, then the preterite is called upon. something that they ‘used to do,’ then the imperfect is the tense to use. If someone is trying to express a thought that refers to a past habitual action, i.e. The imperfect is the Spanish past tense best thought of as the ‘used to do’ case. one word) Spanish past tenses, the preterite and the imperfect. In Spanish, one has to be precise as to if the action happened throughout the past or at a relatively finite moment. In English, context is normally provided to address this, but it is easy to see how this could cause some misunderstandings. The reader or listener, unless other information is provided, does not know whether she studied Spanish one day and then never again, or she studied the language for quite some time. However, there’s some incomplete information in that sentence. If one were to say that she learned Spanish, the verb ‘learn’ has an -ed at the end. In English, the past tense is normally indicated by -ed at the end of a word. Even the idea of a stem-changing verb makes sense after all, languages have to preserve sound, not spelling.Īnd then, just when one thinks that they were absolutely correct in not taking French or Chinese or German, there comes the two past tenses - the preterite and the imperfect.įiguring out the usage of each, as well as how to confidently use the preterite, is one of the crucial steps that will help take a learner from beginning to intermediate Spanish, while also setting them up for understanding just how important verbs are to the entire language. There’s no new alphabet, and other than a few pronunciation differences, speaking isn’t all that hard. For many Spanish learners, the first few weeks are easy.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |