Of the main three Spanish past tenses, the Spanish past imperfect can be the most problematic for Spanish students.
This is because we can use the past imperfect tense, el pretérito imperfecto in Spanish, for setting the scene, talking about habitual behaviour in the past, for descriptions of things and people, and in combination with the el pretérito indefinido to describe the context for past events.
To help you manage the use of this Spanish past tense, I have put together a list of 9 ‘phrase triggers’, that nearly guarantee the use of this past tense.
This is the third article in a series of phrase trigger articles to help distinguish the use of the Spanish past tenses. Here is the first post on phrases that trigger the past simple tense, and the second on phrases that trigger the present perfect tense.
And just like the other two, I’m going to start with a quick overview of the Spanish past imperfect.
An overview of the Spanish past imperfect tense
Starting with this graph, you can see the timeframe where each of the three main Spanish past tenses occurs:
Notice the arrows for the imperfect tense. These arrows signify that events in the past imperfect tense don’t have a well-defined start and end time.
For example, if I said in English:
I used to play card games with my grandma when I was young.
How long did the events in this sentence take place? Did we used to play card games every week for one year or many years?
The fact that we don’t know from the information provided in the sentence how long the card games went on means that we need to use the imperfect tense in the Spanish translation.
Similarly, if I said ‘I used to shop a lot’, then the question would be when did the shopping habit start and when did it stop?
All you know from the statement is that the shopping habit occurred for an undefined timeframe. It could have been a behaviour that lasted for months, years, or decades. This means that we should use Spanish past imperfect tense in this context.
As you will see shortly, the ‘phrase triggers’ below imply an undefined start and end time for a past event, therefore naturally triggering the use of the Spanish past imperfect.
Spanish phrases that trigger the past imperfect tense
Similar to the phrases you have seen so far, ‘I used to…’ and ‘when I was young…’, there are many more that we can use to talk about an undefined timeframe in the past.
If fact, you’ll often be able to combine phrases like ‘I used to’ and ‘when I was young’ with the phrases below.
So, as you are going through the examples below, think about adding the phrase ‘when I was young…’ or ‘when we were young’. This will help with the mindset of thinking about events that didn’t start and stop at specific times.
The other phrase that you could add to the end of almost all of the examples is ‘ya no‘ which means ‘not now’, ‘no longer’, or ‘not any more’. For example, ‘we used to go to the swimming pool a lot, not any more’.
1. Always – Siempre
If you wanted to talk about something that ‘always’ used to happen, you will need to use the past imperfect.
English: We always used to watch television after dinner.
Español: Siempre veíamos la televisión después de la cena.
English: I always used to go to bed early during the week.
Español: Siempre me acostaba temprano entre semana.
2. Almost always – Casi siempre
Closely related to the first phrase trigger, this time you are talking about things that happened ‘almost always’.
English: They almost always arrived late to work.
Español: Ellos casi siempre llegaban tarde al trabajo.
English: She almost always used to call me when I was busy.
Español: Ella casi siempre me llamaba cuando estaba ocupada.
3. Every day, every week, every month… – Todos los días, todas las semanas…
This third phrase trigger is again related to the idea of ‘always’ and doesn’t give an indication of start and end moments for the action.
English: I used to do exercise every day.
Español: Hacía ejercicio todos los días.
English: My friends and I used to eat dinner every Friday night in town.
Español: Mis amigos y yo cenábamos cada viernes por la noche en el centro.
4. Usually – Normalmente
You could also talk about things you usually used to do.
English: I usually used to practice my Spanish before lunch.
Español: Normalmente practicaba mi español antes de la comida.
English: Did you normally spend a lot of time with your friends from school?
Español: ¿Normalmente pasabas mucho tiempo con tus amigos del colegio?
5. Frequently – Con frecuencia
Similarly, you can mention the things you used to do frequently.
English: My siblings and I used to frequently go to the football.
Español: Mis hermanos y yo íbamos al fútbol con frecuencia.
English: We frequently used to eat more dessert than we were allowed.
Español: Con frecuencia comíamos más postre del que nos estaba permitido.
6. A menudo – Often
Another similar phrase trigger for the past imperfect is things you used to do often.
English: There often used to be big parties at my cousins’ house.
Español: A menudo había grandes fiestas en la casa de mis primos.
English: We often used to tell each other stories.
Español: A menudo nos contábamos historias.
7. Sometimes – A veces
The pattern of phrase triggers is hopefully obvious by now. We are stepping slowly from always to never. Here is how to talk about things we sometimes used to do:
English: When I was young I sometimes went to the beach with my best friend.
Español: Cuando era pequeño, a veces iba a la playa con mi mejor amigo.
English: My father sometimes used to travel for his work.
Español: Mi padre a veces viajaba por su trabajo.
8. Almost never – Casi nunca
Here are some examples of things you may have almost never did.
English: We almost never went to my grandparent’s house.
Español: Casi nunca íbamos a la casa de mis abuelos.
English: I almost never used to get up before 8 am.
Español: Casi nunca me levantaba antes de las ocho.
9. Never – Nunca
The last phrase trigger that will help you to remember to use the past imperfect is nunca.
English: I never used to like mushrooms, but now I do.
Español: Nunca me gustaban champiñones, pero ahora sí.
English: We never used to go to the mountains, we always stayed in the city.
Español: Nunca íbamos a la montañas, siempre nos quedábamos en la ciudad.
Your turn
In contrast to the challenge of using the Spanish past imperfect in all of the right contexts, the pattern for these phrase triggers is straightforward.
Choose a few phrase triggers from the list above and try to use them in your next Spanish conversation.
What other Spanish sentences can you create using these past imperfect triggers?
Good lesson. The past has always been the most difficult for me. This was helpful. I am going to save this and review it from time to time.Thanks._Randy
Thanks for the feedback Randy. Hopefully these rules will help you with knowing which conjugation to use and when. ¡Buena suerte!
very helpful!
Not that helpful as there seems to be too many exceptions: Nunca…
Nunca fui a Mexico. I never went. So why imperfect according to your triggers?
Hola Sr. G., when we use a “trigger” word, this means that we likely need a certain tense but it’s a not 100% guarantee every time that this tense is required. You’ve found a good example of an exception with “nunca” and the 9th trigger. Can you think of any others?
Not really as there are always going to be exceptions; like Ayer is usually in the preterite. Ayer hice un pastel. But I could say; Ayer limpiaba mi cuarto cuando encontre’ un ratón muerto.
Okay, well it’s good to know that you can’t think of too many more exceptions, neither can I. That’s why these “trigger” words are helpful!! You’re right, there are always going to be exceptions but not many!
Your example with “ayer” is good but it’s important to note that “encontré” is the tense that goes with “ayer” because if we removed “encontré” from the sentence then “limpiaba” would become “limpié” (Ayer limpié mi cuarto).
Of course it’s helpful Sr. G., there’s almost always exceptions with grammatical rules, being picky is not helpful though. Thanks Andrew.
Thanks for the nice comment Paul! 🙂
Hi Andrew, thank you for this article, it’s really helpful. Can you help with the following example: “de pequeño siempre quise un perro ” And “de pequeño quería un perro”? To my mind they should be the other way around. Every time I think I’ve got the hang of these tenses something like this pops up and confuses me. BTW I love all your articles and videos, especially your trip to Cuba (which I visited recently) you really captured the flavour!
Hola Needra, your example does seem slightly unusual. Just out of curiosity, where did you find this example “de puequeño, siempre quise…”? But, to answer the question, yes, in general, you have found a difficult example in a difficult topic. At Real Fast Spanish, we spend 12 weeks in our level 2 course almost entirely dedicated to the decision between the past simple and the past imperfect, so it is hard to boil the whole thing down to one article because there are exceptions to every aspect of this topic.
That said, there is an important distinction between “I ate ice cream every Saturday as a child” and “I always wanted to try ice cream”. The first sentence refers to an ongoing habitual action without a defined start and end time. The second actually has a well-defined start and end: the person’s birth and right now, because this “desire” has always been true.
Hola Andrew,
Por ejemplo, ‘Cuando era joven, nunca me gustaba el vino tinto, pero ahora sí.’
Disfruta Santa semana,
Christine
Gracias Christine 🙂
English: There often used to be big parties at my cousin’s house.
Español: A menudo había grandes fiestas en la casa de mis primos.
Inconsistent. “habían” for parties (plural)
if “cousin’s” (singular), then mi primo—not mis primos.
Hola Neil, thanks for the question. For the verb “haber” (there is / there are), we don’t need to make this plural. For example, “hay una casa” (there is a house), “hay unas casas” (there are a few houses). And, you’re right for “cousins'”, we can put the apostrophe after the ‘s’ in English for the plural. I will update the English sentence to avoid any confusion.
Gracias por esto andrew. I am working on imperfect right now and this is so helpful.
Solia ser malo en tiempo paso.
Is that right?
¡De nada Cat! I’m glad it was helpful! 🙂 Generally, we don’t want to use ‘solía’ too much, students tend to use it more than is necessary. I recommend that students practice “soler” in the present tense to see how works and then how it might affect a sentence in the past. So we might want to say something like:
– I didn’t understand the past tenses well: No entendí bien los tiempos pasados.
A good confirmation lesson. Thanks
Thanks Garry 🙂
Using the phrase “when I was young…” as a test for imperfect confused me, as it properly translates as “cuando era joven.” No? I spent long enough trying to work out how not young I had to be before I could use the preterite, that seeing the phrase used in an imperfect example sent me straight back to my grammar notes.
Hola Miguelito, yes, that’s exactly right! We would generally want to avoid “cuando
fuijoven”. The fact that we are talking about a period that is not well defined (“being young”) means we should use the past imperfect.Very helpful. When I was at school our Latin master told us about an Imperfect Bug called the Wubc bug. Was, used to , began and continued. That helped too
Thanks for sharing Dennis!! I like “used to / began / continued”. We have to be careful with “was” because it could be the past simple or past imperfect, it depends a lot on the context of the sentence.
so, I have just begun the process of learning spanish. my most recent lessons tell me that for “usually” i should use the word “usualmente”. you say to use “normalmente”. so, which one is correct?
Thanks for the question Tom! In this case, there isn’t a correct or incorrect answer, both are possible. Instead, it is about more common and less common. And, “normalmente” is a much more common word in Spanish than “usualmente” but we can use both from time to time.
Andrew, I notice the verb soler isn’t present in any of these examples. With all this ‘used to’ business I might have thought it would play in here somewhere. When should soler be used??
I often recommend that students practice “soler” in the present tense to see how works and then that will show how it might affect a sentence in the past. In a lot of instances with the past imperfect, there isn’t a strong rule about when we “should” use soler. It’s more about a subtle meaning we want to convey. I have written about this elsewhere on the blog and we cover it in our level 2 live class as well.
Thank you for the article. In theory I understand this, in practice I struggle. For example — I could say “La semana pasada yo comí helado cada día.” Because last week is a fixed time, but “Cada día” would “Trigger” the imperfect. What do we do with sentences that combine both ideas — habitual action within a completed, specific time.
Hola Melissa, I don’t think I included “cada día” as a trigger for the past imperfect. But, I have said that “trigger” words are not a 100% guarantee that the phrases will be followed by a certain tense, just that they “often” occur together. The “trigger” words can trigger the tense in some situations but not always. It’s best to think of “trigger” words as phrases that help you understand intuitively when you should use a certain tense. But we have to be careful because we can almost always come up with examples that will break the trigger pattern.