El pretérito - simple past. Regular verbs.

Hola estudiantes de español,

Hoy vamos a explicar cuando usamos el pretérito perfecto (simple past in English).

Before anything else we should know that in Spanish we have different tenses to refer to the past. The most common tense is the preterite (el pretérito perfecto), the one we are going to see on this post.
However, we have to bear in mind that  we use another tense,  the so called "imperfect tense", for descriptions and actions that happened frequently in the past.

So refocusing on the pretérito perfecto.....Basically we use the simple past for actions:

-completed at a certain point in the past. For example: La semana pasada visité a mis padres.

-that were part of a series of events : Me duché, Hice la cama y tomé un café antes de ir la escuela.

-that lasted for a period of time in the past. For example: El exámen duró 3 horas.


Now we are going to learn how to from the preterite of regular verbs.

Verbs ending in -AR. For example: Hablar.

Yo hablé
Tú hablaste
Él/ella habló
Nosotros/as hablamos
Vosotros/as hablasteis
Ellos/ellas hablaron

The letters in bold are the endings for all the regular verbs ending in -AR.  (-e,-aste,-ó, 'amos,-asteis, -aron). Therefore to form the simple past of any regular verb of the 1st conjugation (-AR) in Spanish you just have to add these ending to the stem of the verb.

Verbs ending in -ER. For example: Comer

Yo comí
Tú comiste
Él/Ella comió
Nosotros/as comimos
Vosotros/as comisteis
Ellos/as comieron

Verbs ending in -IR.For example: Vivir

Yo viví
Tú viviste
Él/ella vivió
Nosotros/as vivimos
Vosotros/as vivisteis
Ellos/as vivieron


As you can see the endings for the 2nd and 3rd conjugation (-ER , IR) are exactly the same, so you just have to add these endings ( - í, -iste, -ió,-imos, -isteis, -ieron) to the stem of any regular verb.


Having learnt this the good part is that now you can form the past tense of many regular verbs in Spanish.!! Muy bien!
Unfortunately in Spanish there is always a "pero"......In these case the drawback is the many irregular verbs  ....which is something we are going to go through on the forthcoming posts!

Espero que este post te ayude con tu español!. En el caso de que quieras saber más o inscribirte en un curso de español puedes enviarme un correo o consultar mi página web para más información.


Saludos

Javier
www.yospanishschool.co.uk