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The Preterite

Uses:

In Spanish, the Preterite is used in 5 main instances:

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1. To express completed actions in the past:


For example: “el verano pasado fui a Cartagena.”


2. To express actions in the past that happened at a specific time:


For example: “ayer nadé mucho.”


3. To express actions in the past that happened between two specific dates:


For example: “Isabel I de Castilla fue reina de Castilla desde 1474 hasta 1504.”


4. To express an action in the past that happened a specific number of times:


For example: “él me llamó diez veces.”


5. To express a series of events that happened at a specific time*:


For example: “la semana pasada fuimos a Barcelona y vimos la Basílica de la Sagrada Familia. Después comimos unas hamburguesas estupendas.” 

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*Notebook: The Imperfect is usually used for descriptions whereas the Preterite is used for actions.

Formation: Regular verbs

The formation of regular verbs in Spanish is fairly simple. In their infinitive form, verbs end in either: -ar, -er or –ir.

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To form the Preterite Tense for regular verbs in Spanish, we remove the -ar, -er or –ir ending of the verb to obtain the stem.

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For example: hablar - ar = habl

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Then the correct Preterite Tense ending must be added to the stem in order to indicate who/what is doing/does the action. 

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For example: the stem of hablar = habl, the ending for I for -ar verbs is "é", the conjugated verb becomes "hablé" (I spoke).

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The endings for each person are as follows:

*Notebook: -er and -ir verbs have the same endings in the Preterite Tense.

**Notebook: the nosotros form of -ar and -ir verbs is the same as it is in the Present Tense

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Therefore to conjugate the hablar, comer and vivir we follow these steps:

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1. We remove the infinitive ending to obtain the stem

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hablar - ar = habl

comer - er =  com

vivir - ir = viv

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2. We add the correct ending to the stem:

Formation: Irregular verbs

Many of the most common verbs in Spanish are irregular in the Preterite. 

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The following verbs change their stems in the Preterite and add the normal endings without the accents except for the -er and -ir endings in the yo form (the letter i becomes an e).

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  • andar → anduv 

  • caber → cup 

  • conducir → conduj *

  • dar → d **

  • decir → dij *

  • estar → estuv

  • haber → hub

  • introducir → introduj *

  • poder → pud

  • pon → pus 

  • querer → quis

  • reducir → reduj *

  • saber → sup 

  • tener → tuv

  • traer → traj *

  • traducir → traduj *

  • venir → vin

  • ver → v **

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* Notebook: the verbs whose Preterite stem ends in the letter j lose the letter i in the ieron ending.

** Notebook: these verbs have the letter i in the yo form instead of an e.

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For example:

Formation: Complete irregulars

The following 3 verbs are all completely irregular:

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  • ir

  • hacer

  • ser

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Interestingly, ser and ir are the same in the Preterite:

Click here to continue to exercises on the Preterite Tense

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Published: 18/04/2016

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