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Why does Spanish have two past tenses — the preterite and the imperfect? And how do you know which one to use in real life? Let's explore the preterite and imperfect tenses, and we'll also get some great practice using estaba, estuve, and estuvo.
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LearnCraft Spanish — 31: Spanish Preterite vs Imperfect Past. Machine-transcribed; use the interactive transcript above to jump the player to any line.
Why is there more than one past tense in Spanish? Join us on a rigorous, step-by-step journey to fluency. I'm Timothy, and this is LearnCraft Spanish. This week we're going to learn all the rest of the common forms of Ser and Estar, including the future tense, the conditional tense, and some unconjugated forms. But to start out, we have to talk some more about the past tense. So far, we've learned some past tense forms for both Ser and Estar. In Ser, these words all had a stressed syllable that sounds like air. Eras, Eras, Eran, and Eramos. In Estar, they all had the stressed syllable, Stab. Estaba, Estabas, Estaban, and Estabamos. But there's another version of the past tense that means something else.
The version of the past tense that we've learned so far is what we call the imperfect past. It's the most common type of past tense for both Ser and Estar, the tense that you'll use all the time. But there's also something called the preterate past tense. In fact, there are two different types of past tense for every verb in Spanish, which is not something that happens in English. But in Spanish, it helps clarify some tricky situations. To illustrate why there would be two different versions of the past tense in Spanish, let's tell a little story about your friend with the curly hair. Let's say that you're still visiting the Estar magic shop and this magic shop has a merchandise area that we haven't visited yet. This is not far away from the Stabby closet that stored magic wands. And in this new preterate area, there are several red shelves where there are assorted magic items such as gimmicky hats and pretend potions.
Now, suppose your friend on the hovercraft sees all this stuff and is very excited by it. So he flies his hovercraft toward the red shelves a little too fast and ends up crashing into the corner, hitting his face against the corner of a shelf. To make matters worse, the paint on these red shelves was still wet. So your friend comes away with red streaks all over his face and the front of his clothes. He almost opens his mouth to say, Ouch! But he doesn't want to get the red paint in his mouth so he keeps his lips sealed. Now, given this unfortunate situation, if the pandas come over and see the red marks on the kid, they're likely to ask about it. Is he okay now? What happened? To respond, you want to tell them that he got hurt.
But imagine that there are two different things you could say. Option one, the kid was hurting. This almost makes it sound like the kid didn't get hurt at the store but instead he was already hurting before you entered the store. That's not quite true. Option two, the kid got hurt. Aha, this indicates an event, something that happened while you were shopping. Compare the kid got hurt to the kid was hurting. It's clear that option two is a more accurate description of what happened. But there's a problem. Spanish doesn't really have a word for got. This word doesn't really have a proper translation from English into Spanish at all. Instead, in Spanish, here are two ways of saying that the kid was hurt. First, you can say the kid was hurt using the imperfect tense.
Second, you can say the kid was hurt using the preterate tense. So the thing is the imperfect tense means that something was going on in general and that's the version we've already learned. But the preterate tense more often indicates an event, typically something that changed at a particular moment. To help remember which is which, the word preterate has a stress on the syllable red, preterate. In Spanish, you can choose one of these two tenses to help clarify whether something was the case in the general past or whether it was a specific finite event. You can clarify this simply by the way you conjugate a verb. To remember this, think of the red shelves and the red paint all over your friend with curly hair. Now, we don't have to learn many preterate forms of said or a thought right now.
Both of these verbs typically aren't considered events most of the time. For example, when you say I was a kid, you're not usually talking about suddenly becoming a kid. You're just saying something that was true in the general past. So you'll use era. But a star does use the preterate tense on occasion. So let's learn two preterate forms. Estuve and estuvo. Estuve means I was and estuvo means he, she, it, or instead was. So as an example of how to use these words, you might use them to indicate that someone was at a place emphasizing the event of being there. A good example is I was here yesterday. If you say estuve aki yesterday, it sounds like you arrived yesterday.
It was a special event. But if you use the general past tense instead, estaba aki yesterday. It sounds like you were already there all along. Or let's say you're telling a story about someone you know and you say either estaba bien or estuvo bien. If you say estaba bien, you mean that they were doing well all along. But estuvo bien tends to imply that they started feeling well at some particular moment or that they were doing well for a specific amount of time. Right now let's do a mini quiz with these preterate forms. We'll only use estuve and estuvo for the purposes of this quiz. Then in a minute we'll practice choosing whether to use the preterate or the imperfect. First example, after that he was okay.
After esto, estuvo bien. I was at the place for two hours. Estuve en el lugar por 2 hours. In the next one use a formal voice. You were great in the show. Usted estuvo great in the show. Usted estuvo genial in the show. Now we're going to start quizzing whether to use the preterate or the imperfect. And this is something that really gives many students a lot of difficulty.
One way that might be helpful to think about it in general is imagine that you're telling a story about some time in the past. And at first you're setting the scene showing the general state of things before anything starts happening. That's the imperfect past tense. Then events start happening at defined moments in time. That's the preterate tense. One easy hint is that if a sentence includes a specific moment or duration of time, you'll normally use the preterate tense. But if you're talking about anything that has a longer duration than the story, you'll use the imperfect tense. Let's go ahead and try this with today's quiz. In the first one our friend is feminine. Our friend was better after that.
Our friend was better after that. Our friend was better after that. In the next one my friend is masculine. How good that you are my friend. How good that you are my friend. How good that you are my friend. I saw him yesterday, he was well. I was a kid when that happened. I was a kid when that happened.
I was a kid when that happened. I was here for two days with the boy. I was here for two days with the boy. I was here for two days with the boy. The problem was that I didn't know what to do. The problem era que no, I knew que to do. In the next one everyone is feminine. The one that was here today was my friend.
La que estuvo aquí, today era mi amiga. For a little while either he was here or she was here. For a little while or he estuvo aquí or ella estuvo aquí. But I was fine when she got here. But I was fine when she got here.
The boy is the one that was my friend. El chico es el que era mi amigo. El chico es el que era mi amigo. In the next one the friend is masculine. His friend was here once. Su amigo estuvo aquí once. The girl the one that I know was not here. La chica la que I know no estaba aquí.
The girl doesn't have it, you have what I want. La chica no lo has, tu have lo que I want. In this one everyone is feminine. I was with your friends for a few hours. They were my friends but he wasn't.
That's why I was at your house this afternoon. Por eso estuve en tu casa esta tarde. She wasn't your friend. In the next one everyone is masculine. I was here in order to be with his friends.
The good thing is that you were a good girl. She got sad when you said that. In the next one everyone is feminine. I was here when we were here.
In the next one use a formal voice. Were you here just now? I want que estén en un buen lugar. They were at the house with the girl. We weren't there with those guys.
This show is brought to you by LearnCraftSpanish.com. The Spanish voice in this episode was our coach Michael Aguadela. Our music was provided by the Seattle Marrinda Cortet and I'm Timothy encouraging you to do the hard work of learning Spanish. Requiring a second language is one of the most fulfilling things you can do. So start your fluency journey today at lcspodcast.com. Thank you.
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