Reference · module 11
How things used to be
Everything this module explains, on one page.
Hablaba, comía
Build the imperfect of any verb.
- An -ar verb takes -aba: hablaba, hablabas, hablaba, hablábamos, hablabais, hablaban.
- Every -er and -ir verb takes the same -ia endings: comía, vivía, tenía, hacía. One set covers both groups.
- Three verbs in the whole language are irregular here: ser gives era, ir gives iba, ver gives veía. Nothing else breaks.
The mistake you are about to make
Yo seía
Yo era
The imperfect is regular almost everywhere, so ser gets built like comía. It is one of the three exceptions: era.
Used to, and was doing
Choose the imperfect for habits and background.
- The imperfect is for what happened again and again: De niño jugaba al fútbol. How many times is not the point — that it repeated is.
- It also paints the scene: Hacía frío y no había nadie. Weather, mood and surroundings sit in this tense.
- Age and clock time in the past are always imperfect: Tenía diez años. Eran las tres.
The mistake you are about to make
De niño jugué al fútbol cada día.
De niño jugaba al fútbol cada día.
English "played" covers both, so the simple past gets picked. A repeated habit takes the imperfect: jugaba.
The scene and the event
Put the two past tenses in one sentence.
- One sentence often needs both: Dormía cuando sonó el teléfono. The sleeping is the scene, the ringing is the event.
- mientras almost always takes the imperfect, because it describes two things running side by side: Mientras cocinaba, escuchaba la radio.
- Some verbs mean different things in each tense. Sabía means I knew; supe means I found out. Conocía means I knew somebody; conocí means I met them.
The mistake you are about to make
Dormí cuando sonaba el teléfono.
Dormía cuando sonó el teléfono.
The long action is the background and takes the imperfect; the ring is the event. English marks neither, so they get swapped.
Telling a childhood
Describe how life used to be.
- De pequeño and de niño open a memory: De pequeño vivía en un pueblo. Both mean when I was small.
- soler in the imperfect says used to, with the plain verb after it: Solía levantarme tarde.
- ya no marks what stopped: Ya no vivo allí. Antes and ahora put the two halves of a life side by side.
The mistake you are about to make
Solía a levantarme tarde.
Solía levantarme tarde.
Plenty of verbs take a before an infinitive, so it creeps in here. Soler takes the infinitive directly.