Do you know how to use the preterite tense to talk about the past in Spanish? |
Welcome to Three Step Spanish Practice by SpanishPod101.com. In this lesson, you will practice using the preterite tense of a few important irregular verbs. |
Let's look at the main dialogue. |
Two people are having a conversation. |
Lucas, ¿qué hiciste el sábado pasado? |
"Lucas, what did you do last Saturday?" |
Fui al estadio con mi papá para ver un partido de fútbol. |
"I went to the stadium with my dad to watch a soccer match." |
We use the preterite tense in Spanish to describe actions that were completed at a specific time in the past. |
Fui |
Here, fui is the irregular verb in the preterite tense. |
This structure helps describe specific events from the past, especially common weekend or trip activities. |
Let's recap the conjugation of a few important irregular verbs in the preterite tense. |
These verbs don't follow the regular -ar, -er, or -ir patterns, so it's important to memorize them. |
First: ser – "to be" |
fui, fuiste, fue, fuimos, fueron |
These forms are identical to the verb ir – "to go" in the preterite. |
To know whether it means "was" or "went," you have to rely on the context. |
Now: ir – "to go" |
fui, fuiste, fue, fuimos, fueron |
Again, these are the same forms as ser, so make sure to pay attention to the full sentence. |
Next: hacer – "to do" or "to make" |
hice, hiciste, hizo, hicimos, hicieron |
Pay special attention to hizo – the "c" changes to "z" to keep the right sound. |
Finally: ver – "to see" or "to watch" |
vi, viste, vio, vimos, vieron |
Let's practice this grammar more in this lesson, so you can start talking confidently about things you did in the past. |
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