Past Imperfect Tense - El Imperfecto Del Indicativo

El Imperfecto Del Indicativo  (Past Imperfect Tense)

Remember:

There are 2 Past Tenses
1. El Pretérito (Simple Past)
2. El Imperfecto (Repetitive Past)

El Imperfecto

• Happened in the past many times
• action may still be happening
• don’t know / don’t care if its still happening
• things we used to do or did over and over again 

Regular Verbs

Subject	AR Verbs	ER-IR Verbs
Yo	aba	-ía
Tú	abas	-ías
Él/ Ella/usted	aba	-ía
Nosotros	ábamos	-íamos
Vosotros	abais	-íais
Ellos/ ellas/ Uds.	aban	-ían

Irregular Verbs: 

There are only 3 Irregular Verbs in this the Past Imperfect Tense (ir, ser and ver)

Subject	ir	ser	ver
Yo	iba	era	veía
Tú	ibas	eras	veías
Él/ Ella/usted	iba	era	veía
Nosotros	íbamos	éramos	veíamos
Vosotros
Ellos/ ellas/ Uds.	iban	eran	veían

 Keywords that help you recognizance that you need to use Past Imperfect

• todos los veranos (every summer)
• cuando yo era niño(a) when I was a kid
• cada domingo (every Sunday)

Mixed up Language

Mixed up Language
mi = “my“ (Possessive adjective)
me = “me“ (IOP/DOP/Reflexive Pronoun)

Don’t make everything reflexive!
Yo como = I eat, Me como = I eat myself (cannibal).
yo = I (subject Pronoun)

Gender (Género)

Gender (Género)

How is Gender Determined?

1. El Adjetivo (the adjective)
2. La Terminación (the ending)
3. El Artículo (the article) 

1. All Nouns and Adjectives have Gender

• Masculine (-o) (-os)
• Feminine (-a) (-as)
• (This is a generalization)

Adjectives must agree in number and gender with the noun they are describing

Examples

perro bonito = dog (singular, male ) handsome (singular, male) 
perros bonitos = dogs (plural, male) handsome (plural, male)
muchacha alta = child (singular, female) tall (singluar, female)
mucachas altas = children (plural, female) tall (plural, female)

2. La Terminación (the ending)

In general

• Feminine: Words that end in (- a), (-cíon),  (- sión), (- d), (-sis), (-z)
  Exceptions: (-ma, -pa, día, ataúd, arroz  (Tip for learning ma & pa are feminine & dad is masculine)
• Masculine: (NORSEL) Words that end with -n, -o, -r, -s - e, -l
  Exceptions: - ción, -sis, metrópolis, mano, calle

Adjective Word endings (El Adjetivo)

• Masculine: Words ending with -o
• Feminime: Words ending with -a
• eg: el águila blanca = the white eagle

 

3. El Artículo (the article)

• Masculine: (un), (unos), (el), (los)
• Feminine: (una), (unas), (la), (las)

Exceptions: 

• el policía (police officer) / la policía (police department)
• When a word starts with a stressed (a-), the masculine article is assigned regardless of the noun gender in singular form only.  eg: el agua fría –> las aguas frías  (cold water)
• Two completely different words
  el toro / la vaca  (buffalo/ cow)
• Words where additional words are needed
  la girafa macho   / hembra  (the male girafe, the female giraffe)
• Certain words do not change gender
  el monstruo  (the monster)

Ambiguities in Gender (sounds funny!)

• policewoman = señora policía or mujer policia or el policía hembra
• stay-at-home dad:  señor ama de casa
• judge = la mujer juez / la señora juez
• el partero (male & female doctor), la partera (female midwife), señor partero (male midwife)
• el general (military general), la general (making fun of a pushy woman) 
• el secretario (politcal post), la secretaria (office assistant)

Verb: venir (to come)

venir (to come)
Singular			Plural
I	yo	vengo	We	nosotros	venimos
You (informal)	tú	vienes  **
He She You (formal)	Él Ella usted	viene  **	They all You all	Ellos Ustedes	vienen **