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Pretérito Imperfecto vs. Pretérito indefinido: one of your worst nightmares

 

PRETÉRITO IMPERFECTO vs PRETÉRITO INDEFINIDO:

one of your worst nightmares

These little motherfuckers are driving you crazy, right? No worries! Probably in your mother tongue you just have one way to express what we, Spaniards, split in two ways. But what it's very important here is that before going deeper into the grammar, you need to understand very well the two sides of this split


Let’s make a visual metaphor: 

Imagine el Pretérito Indefinido as a zip file. You compress that memory of your past and you express it as if that thing that you did was a very specific moment:

el otro día canté en un karaoke

On the other side, imagine el Pretérito Imperfecto as a wifi wave: the way you are expressing that memory it’s wider since you are talking about an action that you used to do, something that you repeated and repeated:

cuando era pequeña cantaba en un karaoke



Is it clear for you? Congratulations! You already have a strong foundation about the difference between these two verbal tenses. 

However... I'm not going to lie to you: the nightmare doesn't stop here! Then you will see that we can mix both pretéritos in one sentence, but ok, ok, this is another chapter! So far you can feel like a true king/queen when impressing your Spanish friends talking about your last trip (pretérito indefinido) or about your childhood (pretérito imperfecto). Let me tell you a secret: if you want to continue impressing them, you are welcome to continue mastering the past tenses with me with online private lessons ;)


   by Sara from

HOLA LOLA SPANISH

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