The Preterit/El Preterito

When to Use the Preterit

• Describing a one time action from the past
• Describing something that had a specific start and end time

Keywords

*triggers the preterit 99% of the time, other 1% triggers imperfect

**triggers the imperfect 99% of the time, other 1% triggers preterit

Conjugation

For normal verbs, swap the “-ar/-er/-ir” with the corresponding ending in the following chart.

Irregulars

• For the preterit, most stem changes only happen in the él and ellos form.
  • There are some oddballs that stem change in all forms and have no accents
• -car, -gar, and -zar verbs only change in the yo form.
  • -car becomes qué
  • -gar becomes gué
  • -zar becomes cé
• Double vowels often go from e/i to y
  • For most of these verbs, all of the i’s have accents
• The following are some common irregulars. There are many more out there.

*This is not a mistake. Yes ir and ser are the same. Spanish is so interesting sometimes :/

Flashcards = practice using the preterit in context.