El Imperfecto ~The Imperfect Tense~
2 Main Past Tenses in Spanish In Spanish, there are 2 main tenses used to talk in the past: 1. El Pretérito 2. El Imperfecto
El Pretérito Remember: The PRETÉRITO is used to talk about actions that are completed. They have a definite beginning and ending. Yesterday I ate dinner at 5:00. I woke up, got dressed, and ate breakfast.
2 past tenses Pretérito Imperfecto
El Imperfecto EL IMPERFECTO is a tense used to describe actions in the past that are not seen as completed. Not translated but cause imperfect Used to would This tense is primarily used to DESCRIBE in the past.
El Imperfecto As a child, I used to always play soccer. (do not translate “used to”) My family and I used to vacation in Hawaii every Summer. I was very shy as a kid.
Conjugation: Endings Drop the Ending (AR, ER, IR) Add: For AR Verbs: aba abas aba ábamos (*Note the accent mark*) aban
Conjugation: Endings ía ías ía íamos ían For ER and IR Verbs: *NOTE = All of the endings have an accent on the “i”
Práctica Hablar = hablaba hablabas hablaba hablábamos hablaban
Práctica Comer = comía comías comía comíamos comían
ser era eras era éramos eran Irregular Verbs: There are only 3 irregular verbs!!! ser era eras era éramos eran
ir iba ibas iba íbamos iban
ver veía veías veía veíamos veían
Use the Impefect To: To talk about actions that were repeated or habitual: Normally I would eat watermelon. (watermelon = sandía) Normalmente, comía sandía.
Use the Impefect To: To Tell Time in The Past And To Tell Sombody’s Age In The Past
Era la una cuando ví la película. Eran las tres y media cuando empezó la clase. Cuando tenía dos años, jugaba en el parque.
Práctica De niña, yo ___ con las muñecas. (jugar) *jugaba* Mi familia y yo siempre ____ la pizza. *comíamos*
Traduzca al Español: I used to always wear jeans and T-shirts. When I was six years old, I used to always play baseball with my friends.
Práctica My family and I visited my grandparents in California a lot. My brothers often swam in the river.