Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The imperfect tense is used to: Describe people, places and things in the past. Tell time and someone’s age. Refer to simultaneous events or actions. Talk about habits, and routines in the past. There are only three irregular verbs in the imperfect tense (‘ser’, ‘ir’, and ‘ver’).
A tense is imperfect if it is used to describe an unfinished action. In English all continuous (also called progressive) tenses are imperfect ones. Past Continuous ; Example: John was eating breakfast when the telephone rang. An action described by was eating is unfinished so the tense is imperfect. Present Continuous; Example: What are you ...
In this guide, we give a quick overview of the English tenses, including when to use them and how to make them, and give plenty of verb tense examples. What is a verb tense? Verb tenses show when an action took place, as well as how long it occurred. The main verb tenses are the past, present, and future.
We mainly use the imperfect tense when talking about repeated, usual, or habitual actions in the past: Los sábados yo jugaba con mi vecino. On Saturdays I played with my neighbor.
Example: Yo visité a mi familia el fin de semana pasado! This sentence uses the Spanish preterite tense and NOT the imperfect because the action occurred only once and we know when it ended! This is one of the most important differences between the Imperfect tense and the preterite tense in Spanish!
The Spanish imperfect tense (el pretérito imperfecto o copretérito) is used to describe past habitual actions or to talk about what someone was doing when they were interrupted by something else.
In short, you use the Spanish imperfect tense to talk about past habitual actions or about what someone was doing when they got interrupted by something else. Sometimes, people call it a “historic” tense, as the actions described in the imperfect tense have no connections to the present.