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The following Spanish tutorial was written by a soon to be graduate student in linguistics named Jennifer Wagner, who runs a fantastic website called Indo-European Languages - ielanguages.com. We thank her for generously allowing us to post her work here! |
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33. Spanish Imperfect Tense
The imperfect is another past tense that is used to express an action as going on in the past, as repeated or habitual. It is also used with mental and physical conditions and for descriptions. The preterite tense is used much more often than the imperfect tense though, except with these verbs: querer, creer, pueder, esperar, tener, and saber. It is formed by adding these endings to the infinitive stem.
| -ar verbs | -er and -ir verbs | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| -aba -abas -aba |
-ábamos -abais -aban |
-ía -ías -ía |
-íamos -íais -ían |
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Yo vivía en España. I used to live in Spain.
Luisa estaba triste. Louise was sad.
El vendía radios. He was selling radios.
Only a few verbs are irregular in the imperfect tense:
| ser - to be | ir - to go | ver - to see | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| era eras era |
éramos erais eran |
iba ibas iba |
íbamos ibais iban |
veía veías veía |
veíamos veíais veían |
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For a detailed tutorial about Spanish Verbs w/ Worksheets & Audio, check out the Musical Spanish Grammar Tutorial |
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This new program adds 51 more verbs to the Learn Spanish Verbs Fast set - in an all new audio program, with catchy new rhythms to help you learn faster. An excellent beginner to intermediate student’s verb audio guide. 4 audio CDS - 5 hours - 36 pg booklet Read More... |
