Spanish Lesson: The Spanish Past Tense

El Pretérito
(Past Tense)

It's all in the endings (again). To conjugate a regular verb of the first group, an "ar" verb, we need the following endings: é, aste, ó, amos, aron. What we do is take away the "ar" ending of the infinitive and add the new endings. Example:

bailar (to dance)
(yo) bail-é (I danced)
(tú) bail-aste (You danced)
(él,ella,usted) bail-ó (He, She danced, You {formal} danced)
(nosotros, nosotras) bail-amos (We danced)
(ellos,ellas, ustedes) bail-aron (They danced)

(Notice that the conjugations used with él, ella, and usted are always the same. The same is true with nosotros and nosotras, and the same with ellos, ellas, ustedes.)

Let's look at some of the most common regular "ar" verbs that follow the above pattern:

Now, for the regular "er" verbs, the endings are: í, iste, ió, imos, ieron. So we do the same. We take away the "er" ending from the infinitive and add the new endings. Example:

aprender (to learn)
aprend-í
aprend-iste
aprend-ió
aprend-imos
aprend-ieron

Notice that I did not include the subject pronouns this time, so you can get used to the idea that you don't need them ("Aprendí" is the same as "Yo aprendí," - I learned). The ending tells you who is doing the action. In the case of "Aprendió español.", you would be able to tell from the context if it meant "He (él) learned Spanish," "She (ella) learned Spanish, or "You (usted) learned Spanish." It could also be written as "El aprendió español," or "ella... etc. Subject pronouns are commonly left out, but they can be used for clarification.

Some of the more common regular "er" verbs:

To conjugate the regular "ir" verbs we use the same endings as for the regular "er" verbs: í, iste, ió, imos, ieron Example:

abrir (to open)
abr-í
abr-iste
abr-ió
abr-imos
abr-ieron

(The hyphen isn't actually used - this is just for demonstrating the endings.)

Some of the more common regular "ir" verbs:

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