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¡Hola! Ready to travel back in time? Let's learn how to talk about things you did yesterday in Spanish using the preterite tense!
The preterite tense is used to talk about actions that started and finished in the past. For example, if you say 'I ate a taco yesterday,' that action is complete. In Spanish, we change the endings of our verbs to show who did the action in the past.
To change a regular -AR verb like hablar (to speak) — pronounced ah-BLAHR — we drop the -ar ending. Then, we add new endings like -é for 'I' or -ó for 'he/she'. Notice how the accent marks on 'hablé' (I spoke) and 'habló' (he/she spoke) change the sound and meaning!
For regular -ER and -IR verbs, like comer (to eat) — co-MEHR — and vivir (to live) — bee-BEER — we do the exact same thing but use a different set of endings. Both -ER and -IR verbs share the same past-tense endings, such as -í for 'I' and -ió for 'he/she'.
Analyze this sentence and determine if it is grammatically correct: 'Ellos comieron las manzanas ayer' (They ate the apples yesterday). Justify your conclusion with step-by-step evidence.
- Identify the subject of the sentence: 'Ellos' (They), which is a third-person plural pronoun.
- Identify the infinitive form of the verb: 'comer' (to eat), which is a regular -ER verb.
- Recall the preterite ending for third-person plural (ellos/ellas) for -ER verbs, which is '-ieron'.
- Combine the verb stem 'com-' with the ending '-ieron' to get 'comieron'.
- Check the sentence: 'Ellos comieron las manzanas ayer'. The verb matches the subject perfectly, and 'ayer' (yesterday) correctly triggers the preterite tense. Therefore, the sentence is 100% correct!
