pretérito: el tiempo pasado

Pretérito esta el nombre por el tiempo pasado en español. Cuando se utiliza un lenguaje formal, se dice “pretérito indefinido” o “pretérito simple” para diferenciarlo de otros tiempos verbales.

La pretérito se utiliza para describir acciones que ocurrieron y finalizaron en el pasado.

cómo conjugar verbos en pretérito

Al igual que en otros tiempos verbales del español, existen verbos regulares y irregulares en la pretérito.

verbos regulares

Si los verbos regulares fueran la única opción, sería fácil aprender todas las conjugaciones porque la idioma español contiene exclusivamente verbos que terminan en ‘-ar,’ ‘-er,’ o ‘-ir.’

Siempre que el verbo sea regular, puedes seguir esta fórmula para crear la forma del pretérito.

¡Atencíon! Los verbos que terminen en ‘-er’ y ‘-ir’ comparten la misma conjugación. Por eso es tan fácil aprender la forma regular del pretérito. Además, la forma “nosotros” es idéntica a la del presente de indicativo, por lo que se utiliza el contexto para desambiguar.

por ejemplo

• “Conversamos de temas filosóficos.”
  “We discussed philosophical topics.”
  (conversar, nosotros, pretérito simple)

• ”Hace mucho tiempo viví en un bosque encantado.”
  ”Long ago I lived in an enchanted forest.”
  (vivir, yo, pretérito simple)

• ”Mis soldados se quejaron del crujido de los carparazones de escorpión bajo sus botas.”
  “My soldiers complained of the crunch of scorpion shells beneath their boots.”
  (quejarse, ellos, pretérito simple)

verbos irregulares

Los verbos irregulares son mas dificíl por aprender.

Hay muchos verbos irregulares en el pretérito, pero no tienes que memorizar todos uno por uno. Al emplear una estrategia de agrupación, se puede reducir significativamente la cantidad de elementos que hay que aprender.

Para una referéncia rapida se utiliza este hoja.
hoja de trucos del pretérito

verbos del estilo “tener”

These verbs all follow a similar pattern; they get a little “uv” in there, AND they don't care about their ending (‘-ar’ verbs conjugate the same as ‘-er’ and ‘-ir’ verbs – they're ALL the same!)

• they get a little “uv” in there
• they drop the accents on the first and third-person forms
• they don't differentiate based on their infinitive endings

In addition to those rules each verb here might get its own special little treatment.
(look out for ‘hacer’ – él tienen un letro irregular; el zed)

• tener → ‘tuv–’
• estar → ‘estuv–’
• andar → ‘anduv–’
• hacer → ‘hic–’ (does not get ‘uv’ but still follows this form closely)

verbos que tienen la raíz ‘j’

Verbs with ‘j’ in the stem all have the standard suffixes, except for the third-person plural which drops the ‘i’ in ieron to become eron.

• decir has an extra little change here; e → i to change the root dec to the preterite stem dij.

verbos contenedor

Some verbs are constructed with prefixes on core forms that are covered above. These container verbs are conjugated in exactly the same way as their core.

ver + dar

ver and dar both drop the accents in the first and third person, and they are both conjugated in the –er/–ir form (not withstanding the infinitive –ar ending of dar)

ser + ir

ser and ir actually get the same exact forms when conjugated in the preterite.

Context helps to make the distinction here. Typically the ir usage is followed by a.

verbos piratas 🦜

Because so much meaning is carried by the stem of a verb the language tries hard to keep the original sounds intact.

For the pirate verbs – which end in -car, -gar, and -zar – the first person form needs a spelling change.
(Suffixes for the other persons do not have the same problem that é does with changing the sound of the preceding consonant.)

–car verbs

c → qu to preserve the hard /k/ sound before é.

–gar verbs

g → gu to preserve the hard /g/ sound before é.

–zar verbs

z → c to preserve the soft /s/ sound before é.

I → Y verbs

<vowel>{-er/-ir} verbs in the preterite

Verbs whose infinitive has –eer, –oír, or –uir
(but not -guir).

i changes to y in the third person (singular and plural).

–eer verbs

–aer verbs

This group is really small – just about only ‘caer’ and ‘recaer’ – because other ‘–aer’ verbs usually fit in the strong irregular “tener” family.

–uir verbs

(These verbs are a special subgroup because they do not have accents in yo / tú forms)