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Preterite Vs Imperfect | ||
Tags: Verbs/Conjugation | Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| bsta Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5860 days ago 6 posts - 7 votes Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 24 11 November 2008 at 1:35am | IP Logged | |||||
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Hi everyone,I have been learning Spanish for a while now and have a basic grasp of most of the tenses but the one thing i struggle with is the 2 main past tenses Preterite and Imperfect.Can you let me know of any easy ways i can differenciate the two with more clarity.??
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| furrykef Senior Member United States furrykef.com/ Joined 6474 days ago 681 posts - 862 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Japanese, Latin, Italian | Message 2 of 24 12 November 2008 at 5:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
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That's a difficult subject, amigo. I can't fully grasp it either! Here is, however, what I do know (if I make any mistakes, please correct me):
Preterite often signals the beginning or completion of events. This is particularly well illustrated by verbs that are said to "change meaning" in the preterite, which are just a special case of this: La conocí hace dos años. Here "conocí" means "I met", because it means you begin to know that person. Supe que la costa estaba cerca. "Supe" means "I found out", because it means you begin to know the fact. Imperfect often signals something in progress when an event occurs: Estaba a punto de salir cuando me llamó. Supe que la costa estaba cerca. The coast was already nearby when you found out the fact. Imperfect signals habitual actions: Cuando era niño iba a la playa. These are often given with "would" in English ("I would go to the beach"); of course, you should take care to avoid confusing this with the conditional meaning of "would", which would use the conditional mood in Spanish. Take note of these contrasting sentence pairs: No pude dormir anoche. This is the completion of an event: you tried to sleep, you couldn't, and eventually you gave up. No podía dormir anoche. This means you hadn't yet fallen asleep at the time you're talking about: maybe you managed to sleep later, but then, maybe you didn't. This sort of sentence has to fit in a larger context, for example: "No podía dormir anoche. Eran las dos y estaba bastante cansado, pero estaba pensando en..." This is just a case of "something in progress" (your inability to sleep) we talked about earlier. Tuve que ir al dentista. You had to go to the dentist, and you did. You might go on to talk about your visit there, or you might just be throwing it out there as a random, isolated fact for whatever reason. Tenía que ir al dentista. You had to go to the dentist, but you hadn't yet at the time you're currently talking about. As before, this is something you provide as background information for something else. It's also used if you didn't go to the dentist after all: "Tenía que ir al dentista, pero Adrian me llamó y..." - Kef Edited by furrykef on 13 November 2008 at 1:31pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Javi Senior Member Spain Joined 5983 days ago 419 posts - 548 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 3 of 24 12 November 2008 at 5:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
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That's what I'd do if I were studying Spanish: I would learn a few well chosen simple phrases where the use of the imperfect is not optional, and then, with this basis and by doing a lot of reading and listening, I would finally get an insight into what natives mean by using the imperfect in places where the preterite is also possible. That way I would gradually develop an intuition for using them naturally with all the nuances involved.
It's not easy thinking of those phrases though, but here you've got a few of them that's just occurred to me:
You may be thinking, why not the other way round? Well, for a start imperfect is the tense that doesn't exist in English and so the most worth learning, and most importantly, there are not such a hard restrictions for using the imperfect in the place of the preterite, journalists for example do it every day. And that's all, I hope it helps. Edited by Javi on 12 November 2008 at 6:11pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| furrykef Senior Member United States furrykef.com/ Joined 6474 days ago 681 posts - 862 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Japanese, Latin, Italian | Message 4 of 24 13 November 2008 at 10:07am | IP Logged | |||||
Hmm... I wouldn't say that. I'd say that the English past tense is "split" into the preterite and imperfect, rather than that the past tense is the preterite and the imperfect is some completely new concept. The idea of the imperfect tense is less familiar, but I wouldn't say that English doesn't have it any more than I'd say that it doesn't have the preterite. - Kef Edited by furrykef on 13 November 2008 at 10:10am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Hencke Tetraglot Moderator Spain Joined 6896 days ago 2340 posts - 2444 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Finnish, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 24 13 November 2008 at 11:08am | IP Logged | |||||
Very good summary of the main differences by furrykef above.
That particular use of imperfect "esperaba" is an interesting special case. Here "esperaba" is used instead of the conditional "esperaría", and it is quite different from the usual situation, when you are deciding between the two alternatives, imperfect or preterite. This use of imperfect instead of conditional is very common in informal and colloquial usage though I am not sure whether it is officially considered correct or not (?). In formal language you'd be more likely to hear "esperaría" there. Then there is the use of "journalistic style" imperfect, that javi also refers to. In newspapers and radio and TV you often hear imperfect used in situations that are very clear-cut preterite cases. I have never observed anyone talking like that in normal conversation, but in a journalistic context special rules apply apparently. Edited by Hencke on 13 November 2008 at 11:10am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| furrykef Senior Member United States furrykef.com/ Joined 6474 days ago 681 posts - 862 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Japanese, Latin, Italian | Message 6 of 24 13 November 2008 at 2:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Oh, here's another interesting pair, and here is where things start getting murky:
El coche fue muy caro. The car was very expensive, but you bought it anyway. The preterite used is because it describes an event, i.e., buying the car. El coche era muy caro. The car was very expensive, so you didn't buy it (or at least, you hadn't yet bought it at the time you're talking about). This is background information, so you use the imperfect. Anyway, now that I've talked about what I do know, I'd like to talk about what I don't know. ;) Here's one example that confounds me. This was from an exercise where you were instructed to fill in each blank with the correct preterite (i.e., not imperfect) form of saber to agree with the verb's subject: --Nosotros no (supimos) nada de lo que preguntaron en ese examen. ¿Tú (supiste) algo? --¡Nada! Yo tampoco (supe) ni una palabra. I don't understand why the preterite was used, though. This doesn't seem to signal the beginning or completion of an event as I understand it. Then we have this sentence: No entiendo qué pasó, ayer escribí un post y hoy no está... además, era larguísimo... I thought maybe "fue" would be better on the grounds that it sort of describes a complete event (the existence fo the post), but I was told, no, it must be "era", since it's background information. And I understand the explanation, but getting a real instinct for that sort of thing doesn't seem to be very easy. That's the real hard part of grasping the difference: it's not really knowing the rules that's hard, it's getting into the way of thinking. - Kef Edited by furrykef on 14 November 2008 at 3:28am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Javi Senior Member Spain Joined 5983 days ago 419 posts - 548 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 7 of 24 13 November 2008 at 4:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
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All the sentences that furrykef provided are possible with both imperfect and preterite. On the other hand, the ones I wrote, except the fifth, must take the imperfect. We can adjust that phrase so the preterite shall be impossible too, that way:
No creo que sea el momento de comprar, yo que tú me esperaba. (This usage of the imperfect belong indeed to the colloquial register of the language) Then we have sentences where using the imperfect or the preterite changes the meaning, contrasting sentence pairs as furrykef said, for example: La conocí hace dos años. (I met her two years ago) La conocía hace hace dos años (I already knew her two years ago) Supe que la costa estaba cerca. (I worked out/was told/found out that the coast was close) Sabía que la costa estaba cerca. (I knew that coast was close) Estaba a punto de salir cuando me llamó. (I was about to leave by the time she called me) Estuve a punto de salir cuando me llamó. (I nearly left when she called me) Supe que la costa estaba cerca. (I worked out that the coast was close) Supe que la costa estuvo cerca. (I worked out that the coast was close sometime/that time) Another group is formed by sentences where there isn't any significant meaning change, it's more about the point of view the speaker adopts, how they want to tell the story. For example: De niño iba/fui a la playa Fue/era un hombre bueno Ayer no estabas/estuviste en clase La peli era/fue aburrida El camino llegaba/llegó hasta aquí And finally, we would have sentences where only preterite is possible, but I don't think there is any. The use of the imperfect instead of the preterite does not only belong to the journalist language, it's colloquial too, although in a continuous form, for example: Empaquetamos todo y a las tres estábamos saliendo (=salimos) para acá. I don't think it's anything surprising, you can talk about whatever think that happened in the past as if it was an ongoing action, because all actions were ongoing in some moment, there are not quanta of time in Spanish. The opposite, though, is not true, not all ongoing actions have a beginning or an end. For example, in "no esperaba verte aquí hoy" the state of me not expecting to see you has not an end, that's why you can't use the preterite. Edited by Javi on 23 November 2008 at 10:20am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Javi Senior Member Spain Joined 5983 days ago 419 posts - 548 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 8 of 24 13 November 2008 at 5:23pm | IP Logged | |||||
No me sabía la lección = The lesson wasn't in my mind No me supe la lección = I failed to show that the lesson was in my mind
It doesn't have to, but fue sounds a bit silly in this case. The post was long, that's all. If it existed over a period of time it was long all over it, there is no need to mention. For example, you can say of a book that "fue muy importante en su tiempo", even if it still exists today, but it would be silly to say that fue largo, estuvo escrito en español, etc Edited by Javi on 17 November 2008 at 1:17pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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