Beginning Spanish ¡Empecemos por aquí!

426 •  Chapter 5: Nuestro pasado Lengua 5.6: Preterite versus imperfect The preterite and imperfect are the two main past tenses in Spanish. You will continue studying the differ- ences all the way up through Advanced Spanish, so we will approach this first taste with realistic expecta- tions: we want to understand how to form each verb tense, and we should be able to identify common uses of each. We should also often be able to determine which tense is most appropriate when given a straightforward context. Sometimes it is helpful to hear information explained in a variety of ways. If you search “preterite versus imperfect” online, you will find an incredible number of resources. The explanation presented here is a good start and will suffice for this level. There is a lot more to learn later. In general, the imperfect describes what things were like and what used to happen, while the preterite tells what happened. Imperfect: It was Saturday, I had a cold, and I wanted to play soccer. Preterite: I walked out of the house, noticed the weather, then ran back inside. Could we say, then, that ran requires the preterite? And that was requires imperfect? No. Verbs can be used in both tenses. Imperfect: I often ran to the store after school when I was little. While I ran in the park, someone broke into my car! My computer was in there! Preterite: I ran to the store this morning. That was my first run in a week. I ran in the park twenty times last month. It was a strange month. I ran for thirty seconds, and that was enough. We can even have both in a single sentence: ¡Mientras corría en el parque, un niño corrió enfrente de mí! Many times, both verb tenses work grammatically, but their usage does affect the meaning. Here is a pair of sentences where both tenses work, though the meaning changes: Viví en México en el 2015. (This is something that happened, and I am viewing my time in Mexico as a single closed event. It began and ended in 2015.) Vivía en México en el 2015. (This is what things were like; it was ongoing. Its beginning and end are irrelevant, though we can guess it lasted for much of or possibly all of 2015.) And here are two sets of sentences to illustrate the effect of the different verb forms on whether actions are sequential or concurrent: Llamé a mi papá por teléfono cuando choqué contra un árbol. (I hit the tree first, and then called my dad.)