Spanish - More Imperfect and Preterite Tense

AR endings: é, aste, ó, amos, asteis, aron

ER/IR endings: í, iste, ió, imos, isteis, ieron

Many irregulars, including ser, ir, hacer and many others.

The preterite tense is used for what happened once, what happened a specific number of times, or to describe someting at a specific moment in time.

AR endings: aba, abas, aba, ábamos, abais, aban

ER/IR endings: ía, ías, ía, íamos, íais, ían

Only 3 irregulars: ir, ser and ver

The imperfect is used to say what used to happen and what happened over and over again.

It is also used to describe what things were generally like in the past.

The imperfect tense and the preterite tense can be used in the same sentence.

To do this, the imperfect tense can describe what was happening when an action in the preterite tense interrupted that activity.

For example: I was eating (imperfect) when Johnny arrived (preterite). = Yo comía cuando Johnny llegó.

The sentence can also be flipped around using the word "while," which is mientras in Spanish.

Johnny arrived while I was eating. = Johnny llegó mientras yo comía.