The imperfect tense in Spanish

• The imperfect tense is used to talk about what someone used to do, what used to happen or what something used to be like.

• Most Spanish verbs are regular in the imperfect tense.

Watch this video to learn more about when to use the imperfect tense.

The imperfect tense is used:

• to describe repeated or continuous actions or routines in the past

• to describe what something or someone was like in the past

• to say what people used to do or what things used to be like

For example:

Iba a pie todos los días. - I walked every day.

Mi escuela primaria era muy grande. - My primary school was very big.

En el pasado jugaba al baloncesto. - In the past, I used to play basketball.

The imperfect tense is also used to describe weather in the past.

For example:

Hacía sol/hacía calor. - It was sunny/ it was hot.

Estaba frío/estaba nublado. - It was cold/it was cloudy.

Nevaba. - It was snowing.

Llovía. - It was raining.

The imperfect tense is frequently used with phrases that describe how often something used to happen.

For example:

regularmente - regularly

a veces - sometimes

cada día/todos los días - every day

generalmente - usually

The majority of verbs are regular in the imperfect tense.

The imperfect is formed by removing the ar, ir and er endings from the infinitive to form the stem and adding the imperfect endings:

The endings for er and ir verbs are the same.

Here are some examples of the imperfect tense:

Mi padre trabajaba en una oficina. - My father used to work in an office.

De niño, siempre comía caramelos. - As a child, I always used to eat sweets.

There are only three irregular verbs in the imperfect tense in Spanish:

The imperfect of hay (there is/there are) is había (there was/there were/there used to be). Había is used frequently for describing things in the past.

For example:

En mi pueblo había un restaurant. - In my village, there used to be a restaurant.

The imperfect tense is used when there isn’t a definite beginning or end to an action in the past, and this action is repeated or continuous.

For example:

Siempre jugaba en el parque. - I always played in the park.

The preterite tense tells us that the action took place at a specific point in time and is completed.

For example:

Ayer jugué en el parque. - Yesterday I played in the park.

The sentence veía la tele cuando llegó mi amigo (I was watching television when my friend arrived) is a good example of the difference between the two tenses.

The imperfect is used to describe something that was happening at the time (veía la tele) and the preterite is used to talk about a single completed event (llegó mi amigo) that happened during the longer action.

Practise what you've learned about the imperfect tense in Spanish with this quiz.

The majority of verbs are regular in the imperfect tense.

The imperfect is formed by removing the ar, ir and er endings from the infinitive to form the stem and adding the imperfect endings.

The table shows the full conjugation of the verb, including the we, you (plural) and they forms.

The table shows the full conjugation of three irregular verbs, including the we, you (plural) and they forms.

For example:

Veíamos mucha basura en la calle. - We used to see a lot of rubbish in the street.

Iban a la iglesia. - They used to go to church.

Practise what you've learned about the imperfect tense in Spanish with this quiz.

Now you have learned about how to use the imperfect tense in Spanish why not explore regular verbs in the preterite tense in Spanish?