18.1 Why Another Past Tense?
You've already tackled one past tense in Spanish: the preterite. But there's another important one you need to know—the imperfect!
The Imperfect
The imperfect describes ongoing, habitual, or background actions in the past.
The imperfect is your go-to tense for providing background details, describing ongoing past actions, or recounting habitual activities. It's often used to talk about age, health, or emotions in past contexts. It's also ideal for describing repetitive actions from your childhood—like doing your homework every night (you definitely did that, right?). While the preterite drives the plot forward with specific actions and events, the imperfect creates the backdrop, setting the scene and adding depth to your story.
Here's a quick example where the first verb is imperfect and the second is in the preterite:
Yo comía un burrito cuando el extraterrestre aterrizó en mi jardín.
I was eating a burrito when the alien landed in my yard.
In this example, the preterite highlights the specific action—the alien landing in my yard. It's the main event, moving the story forward. Meanwhile, the imperfect sets the scene with me eating my burrito, presenting it as an ongoing background action rather than a key plot point.
18.2 Formation of the Imperfect
Here are the regular verb endings. You're so far down the road to becoming a VerbMaster that you don't need much more intro than that:
Regular Imperfect Tense Endings
| Pronouns | -AR verb endings | -ER verb endings | -IR verb endings |
|---|---|---|---|
| yo | -aba | -ía | -ía |
| tú | -abas | -ías | -ías |
| él/ella/Ud. | -aba | -ía | -ía |
| nosotros/as | -ábamos | -íamos | -íamos |
| vosotros/as | -abais | -íais | -íais |
| ellos/ellas/Uds. | -aban | -ían | -ían |
What do you notice about the regular verb forms? Hopefully a couple things. First, the -ER and -IR endings are the same and second, those all carry accents in all forms, as does the nosotros form of the -AR verbs.
18.3 Regular Verbs in the Imperfect
Again, we'll just break off the stem and add the corresponding endings to HABL+, COM+, VIV+.
18.4 Using the Imperfect
We have come up with some helpful instances below of when you should be using the imperfect tense as opposed to another past tense. You should use the imperfect tense when you are doing any of the following.
Describing or giving information in these categories:
Weather
Hacía mucho calor.
It was very hot.
Age
Ella tenía 25 años.
She was 25 years old.
Characteristic
Mi abuelo era muy alto.
My grandfather was very tall.
Health
Usted estaba muy enfermo.
You were very sick.
Feelings
Él estaba cansado y tenía mucha sed.
He was tired and very thirsty.
Emotions
Ellas estaban muy enojadas.
They were very angry.
Providing background information
Time
Eran las diez de la noche.
It was ten o'clock at night.
Date
Era el veinte de marzo.
It was March 20th.
Describing an ongoing state
El niño estaba muy feliz el día de su cumpleaños.
The boy was very happy on his birthday.
Narrating an ongoing action or multiple simultaneous ongoing events
Cuando yo vivía en Argentina, trabajaba como payaso.
When I used to live in Argentina, I used to work as a clown.
Narrating a repeated or repetitive action without specifying an end or number of repetitions
Comías muchas empanadas cuando eras joven.
You ate lots of empanadas when you were young.
Setting the scene (but then the preterite interrupts!)
Él hablaba con la dentista, pero ella le pidió que se detuviera.
He was speaking with the dentist, but she asked him to stop.
Duration without a clearly indicated endpoint or timeline
Esperaba horas en la oficina antes de ver al doctor.
I was waiting for hours in the office before seeing the doctor.
To dive into the nuances of the imperfect as it compares to the preterite tense, check out our Preterite vs. Imperfect lesson!
Practice Time!
Master these verb conjugations from Lesson 18