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¡Hola! Ready to talk about the past? Today, we will learn how to use the preterite tense in Spanish to share things we already did!
The preterite tense is a Spanish past tense. We use it for actions that started and finished in the past. For example, 'I ate an apple' or 'she walked home'.
To change a regular -AR verb to the past tense, we drop the -AR ending. Then, we add new endings like -é (for I) or -ó (for he/she). Let's see how 'hablar' (to speak) changes to 'habló' (he/she spoke)!
Regular -ER and -IR verbs share the exact same endings in the preterite tense! For example, the ending for 'I' is -í. So, 'comer' (to eat) becomes 'comí' (I ate), and 'vivir' (to live) becomes 'viví' (I lived).
Change the sentence "Yo hablo español" (I speak Spanish) into the past tense: "I spoke Spanish."
- Identify the verb in the original sentence. The verb is "hablar" (to speak).
- Identify the subject of the sentence. The subject is "yo" (I).
- Drop the "-ar" ending from "hablar" to find the stem: "habl-".
- Look up the preterite ending for "yo" with "-ar" verbs, which is "-é".
- Attach the ending "-é" to the stem "habl-" to get "hablé" (hah-BLAY).
- Write the complete new sentence: "Yo hablé español" (I spoke Spanish).
