Chapter 28 · A2
El Pretérito Imperfecto (Imperfect)
Might help first: Ch. 20 — Verb Conjugation System: Overview & Regular Verbs, Ch. 22 — Present Tense: Regular -AR/-ER/-IR Verbs (a suggestion, never a requirement)
English’s plain past tense doesn’t ask you to specify whether an action was a one-time event or a repeated habit, a sudden happening or an ongoing backdrop — “I played piano” covers both “I played piano yesterday, once” and “I played piano every day as a kid.” Spanish refuses to leave that distinction unmarked. Where Chapters 26–27 taught you the preterite, for actions viewed as complete, this chapter teaches its counterpart: the imperfect, the tense for describing the past with no interest in when something started or stopped — the ongoing action, the repeated habit, the backdrop other things happen against. The good news is that of all the past tenses in Spanish, this is the one with almost nothing to memorize: outside of three verbs, every verb in the language conjugates by the exact same two sets of endings you’re about to learn.
Core Pattern: The Two Imperfect Endings
-AR verbs: -aba, -abas, -aba…
A1Regular -ar verbs drop the -ar and add one consistent set of endings: -aba, -abas, -aba, -ábamos, -abais, -aban.
Hablábamos por teléfono todas las noches.
We used to talk on the phone every night.
-ER/-IR verbs: -ía, -ías, -ía… (identical for both)
A1Regular -er and -ir verbs share one identical set of endings — the first tense in this book where the -er/-ir split from Chapter 22 disappears completely: -ía, -ías, -ía, -íamos, -íais, -ían.
De pequeños, vivíamos cerca de la playa.
As kids, we used to live near the beach.
Mis abuelos comían juntos cada domingo.
My grandparents used to eat together every Sunday.
Core meaning: an action with no visible edges
A2The imperfect frames a past action without marking when it began or when it ended — it’s less a single event than a stretch of time, a repeated pattern, or a state that simply held true.
Cuando vivía en Sevilla, caminaba a la playa cada tarde.
When I lived in Seville, I used to walk to the beach every afternoon.
Building Out: The Three Irregulars, and the Imperfect’s Full Range of Meaning
The same two endings above account for every verb in Spanish, with exactly three exceptions — and once you’ve met those three, the rest of this section just extends the “no visible edges” idea from Core Pattern into the specific jobs the imperfect does constantly: setting a scene, stating an age, telling time, and naming a habit.
Ser, ir, and ver: the only three irregular verbs in the entire tense
A2None of these three trace a four-cell boot outline the way a stem-changing present-tense verb does (Chapter 23) — every one of the six forms departs from what the regular endings would produce, including nosotros and vosotros, so there’s no “unaffected” baseline left to draw a boot shape around. Ser and ir are true suppletive irregulars, built from historical roots unrelated to their infinitives — the same phenomenon behind ir’s present tense (voy, vas, va…). Ver is milder: it simply keeps its full stem (ve-) instead of shrinking to the bare v- that the regular ending would attach to.
Cuando era joven, iba a la playa todos los veranos y veía el atardecer desde la arena.
When I was young, I used to go to the beach every summer and watch the sunset from the sand.
Description in the past: setting the scene
A2Because the imperfect doesn’t mark a beginning or an end, it’s the natural tense for describing what something was like — physical appearance, weather, mood, atmosphere.
La casa era pequeña pero muy acogedora.
The house was small but very cozy.
El cielo estaba gris y hacía viento.
The sky was gray and it was windy.
Age and time in the past
A2Two specific, very common description jobs deserve their own mention: stating someone’s age, and telling the time, both always in the imperfect when set in the past.
Tenía diez años cuando aprendí a nadar.
I was ten years old when I learned to swim.
Eran las tres de la tarde cuando salimos.
It was three in the afternoon when we left.
Habitual actions: the imperfect’s home turf
A2Repeated or habitual actions in the past — the closest match to English “used to” — are the single most common job the imperfect does. Time expressions like todos los días, cada verano, siempre, normalmente, de niño/de pequeño, and mientras signal it constantly.
Todos los veranos, mi familia y yo íbamos a la costa.
Every summer, my family and I used to go to the coast.
Mientras mi madre cocinaba, mi padre ponía la mesa.
While my mother cooked, my father set the table.
Nuance, Exceptions & Contrast
Imperfect for politeness: softening a request by reaching into the past
B1Spanish has a use of the imperfect that has nothing to do with the past at all: placing a present request one step back in time, purely to make it sound gentler and less direct.
Quería preguntarte algo.
I wanted to ask you something.
¿Quería algo más?
Did you want anything else?
Imperfect progressive: estaba + gerund for extra vividness
B2Just as the present progressive pairs estar with a gerund (Chapter 25), the imperfect of estar pairs with a gerund to frame a past action as vividly, visibly in progress — an optional extra layer of “you could picture it happening” on top of the plain imperfect.
Estaba lloviendo cuando salimos.
It was raining when we left.
Bringing It Together
Faced with a past-tense sentence, reach for the imperfect whenever you’re describing how things were rather than reporting what happened: a scene, an age, a time, a repeated habit, or — reaching outside the past altogether — a softened request in the present.
Cuando yo era pequeño, vivíamos en un pueblo donde siempre hacía buen tiempo. Todos los domingos, mis abuelos venían a comer con nosotros e íbamos todos juntos al parque. Yo tenía apenas seis años, pero me acuerdo perfectamente.
When I was little, we lived in a town where the weather was always good. Every Sunday, my grandparents would come eat with us and we'd all go to the park together. I was barely six years old, but I remember it perfectly.
Where to Go Next
- Chapter 10, Telling Time & Dates — the full clock-time construction this chapter’s eran las tres only previewed.
- Chapter 20, Verb Conjugation System: Overview & Regular Verbs — the stem/ending foundation this chapter’s two regular endings build on.
- Chapter 23, Present Tense: Stem-Changing & Irregular Verbs — contrast: nearly every irregular verb from that chapter (tener, hacer, querer, poder…) is perfectly regular here.
- Chapter 26, El Pretérito Indefinido: Regular Verbs and Chapter 27, El Pretérito Indefinido: Irregular Verbs — the completed-action counterpart to everything in this chapter.
- Chapter 29, Preterite vs. Imperfect: Choosing the Right Past — the full decision framework for choosing between this tense and the preterite.
- Chapter 34, El Condicional Simple — another softening/politeness device (querría, podría) alongside the imperfect politeness use above.
Ready to practice?
9 exercises · multiple-choice, fill-blank, conjugation-grid…