7.4 Introducción: Siempre había un festejo

El pretérito y el imperfecto usados juntos.

This chapter is devoted to the understanding of the preterite and imperfect in Spanish. Many people refer to these as the “two pasts” in Spanish, but that is essentially untrue! In language, there are three markers of time (called tenses), i.e, the present, past, and future.

But to express how an action extends over time, there is a little thing called “aspect.”  A verb tense can have either a perfect or progressive aspect. Think that the perfect tenses are so complete that they are perfect and that the progressive tenses are or were in progress and never completed. Let’s take a look at two examples of the preterite and the imperfect:

  1. Ella habló por teléfono con su mamá.
  2. Ella siempre hablaba por teléfono con su mamá.

Both examples show the past tense but with different aspects: they have two different meanings. Which example shows a perfectly complete action in the past? Which one shows an action in progress that might have occurred multiple times?

If you guessed that the preterite represents the perfect aspect and the imperfect represents the progressive aspect then you are correct!

The first sentence shows that she talked on the phone at either a specific time or it was a completed finished action. Whereas the second sentence shows a repeated or habitual action in the past that was never completed. So the next time you’re stuck on preterite versus imperfect, think about the concept of “aspect” and what meaning you are trying to convey.

 

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