Preterite Tense: Regular Verbs
Preterite Tense: Regular Verbs
English has one simple past tense. Spanish has two, and the preterite — the one you're learning now — is for actions that happened and finished, cleanly, at a specific point.
Grammar Comparison
Grammar Comparison
A completed action, viewed as a single event
comí (I ate), hablé (I spoke), viví (I lived) — new endings, not just 'was/were' or '-ed'
I ate, I spoke, I lived — the simple past, built with '-ed' or an irregular past form
The preterite marks an action as finished and bounded — it happened, and it's over. English's simple past covers this same idea but also covers ongoing or habitual past actions that Spanish would express differently (in the imperfect, coming in a later lesson). For now, treat the preterite as your default 'this happened' past tense.
New endings, sorted by -ar vs. -er/-ir
hablé, hablaste, habló, hablamos, hablaron (-ar) vs. comí, comiste, comió, comimos, comieron (-er/-ir)
no equivalent split — English's past tense doesn't sort verbs by their infinitive ending
Just like the present tense split you already learned, the preterite has one set of endings for -ar verbs and a second, shared set for -er and -ir verbs. English's simple past doesn't classify verbs this way at all — 'talked' and 'lived' both just add '-ed', regardless of any equivalent to the -ar/-er/-ir split.
Vocabulary
Vocabulary
- English
- I spoke
- English
- you spoke
- English
- he/she spoke
- English
- we spoke
- English
- they spoke
- English
- I ate
- English
- you ate
- English
- he/she ate
- English
- I lived
- English
- they lived