| Hola, soy Brenda, tu profesora de español. Hoy vamos a ver una de las diferencias entre el pretérito y el imperfecto. |
| Today, we’re going to have a look at one of the differences between the pretérito and el imperfecto. As you know, we have two different Spanish tenses for the simple past in Spanish and that is the pretérito or pasado simple and the imperfecto. |
| So one of the main differences that I always tell my students is that el pretérito is going to move the story forward, the story, ugh. So the pretérito is going to move the story forward. So, the pretérito is the one that is going to tell the story. This happened, then this happened, then this happened, then this happened. |
| On the other hand, el imperfecto is going to describe, in a story, is going to describe the setting, the characters, who was involved in the story, and what was the day like, what was that person like, who were you with, what were you feeling. So, anything that is a description in a story in the past, will use the imperfecto and not the pretérito. |
| That’s the main difference. So with the imperfecto, we’re going to get information and we’re going to describe the setting, the time, the people, the feelings, everything that is related to the description of the story. And with the pretérito, what we are going to do is move the story forward. We’re going to tell the story. The pretérito will say what happened and the imperfecto will say who was there, where were you, it’s going to set up the story. |
| Have a look at this example. |
| Eran las 2am, hacía mucho frío y llovía. |
| Estaba con Romina en una habitación muy oscura que tenía muy poca luz. |
| De repente, escuchamos un ruido muy fuerte. |
| Con miedo, caminamos hasta la cocina encendimos la luz y vimos al gato del vecino. |
| ¡Qué susto! |
| Muy bien. So as you can see in this example, at the beginning, I was describing the story, the setting of the story; what time it was, eran las 2am; what was the weather like, hacía frío y llovía; who I was with, estaba con Romina; where were we, en una habitación muy oscura que tenía poca luz. So, I’m describing the room, can you see? |
| Now, I have a question for you, what happened up until that point? Absolutely nothing. We are just describing the setting and that’s why we are using the imperfecto. |
| Now is when the story starts and I’m going to tell you what actually happened and I’m gonna use the pretérito for that. I said de repente. That’s a great clue that will tell us specifically that we’re gonna use the pretérito. We’re talking about a story, something that happened. |
| De repente, escuchamos un ruido... |
| “We heard a noise...” |
| Okay, that’s something happened, number one. |
| Caminamos hasta la cocina... |
| Okay, so we walked there. |
| ...encendimos la luz... |
| “...we turned the light on...” |
| ...vimos al gato del vecino. |
| “...we say the neighbor’s cat.” |
| So, as you can see, all these actions were in the pretérito because we’re telling the story, we’re moving the story forward, we’re telling you what happened. |
| Muy bien estudiantes. I really hope that you can understand a little bit of this aspect and the main differences in storytelling, specifically, when we use the pretérito versus when we use the imperfecto. |
| Mucha gracias. Thank you so much for watching and I will see you next class. Adiós! |
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