UNIT SEVENTEEN
The preterite tense
The preterite tense in Spanish, sometimes called the simple past tense in English, is used
to describe completed actions in the past. For example:
We bought a house.
He played football.The actions took place at a specific time and are over and done with.
This tense would not be used to describe actions that were on-going (e.g. ‘he was
watching television’) or that happened repeatedly (e.g. ‘When I was young we always
went to Spain for our holidays’) and it would not be used for descriptions (e.g. ‘The sun
was shining’). The tense required for the preceding examples will be discussed in Unit
18.
The preterite has three sets of endings; one for -ar verbs, another for -er and -ir verbs
and the third for a small number of verbs that undergo a stem change.
The endings for regular -ar verbs are as follows:
e.g. comprar (to buy)
-é compré I bought
-aste compraste you bought
(^) -ó compró he/she bought
you (Ud.) bought
-amos compramos we bought
-asteis comprasteis you bought
-aron compraron they bought
you (Uds.) bought
Here are some examples of other -ar verbs in the preterite tense:
Desayuné a las ocho.
I had breakfast at eight o’clock.
Escuchó un ruido.
He heard a noise.