Preterite vs. Imperfect?

Question

For spanish i need help knowing the difference from preterite and imperfect any help would be greatly appreciated

Answer 1

Preterite is the simple past, for an action which took place at a specific time. " I walked down the street".

But if I want to describe my walk, I use the imperfect. "I was walking down the street." "As I was walking down the street..." "I was walking down the street when...."

The imperfect is also used for actions which used to happen. "I used to walk down the street every day."

Another use for the imperfect is descriptive. "The street was full of activity. People were walking up and down and cars drove tail to tail." In Spanish all the verbs in that sentence would be in the imperfect, as they all have a descriptive function.

http://www.studyspanish.com/lessons/pretimp4.htm
http://www.studyspanish.com/lessons/pretimp1.htm
http://www.drlemon.net/grammar/pretvsimp.html

Answer 2

There is nothing that is always true about tenses in Romance languages, but as a general oversimplification the preterite is employed for an action that happened once and is over: "I went to the store last Tuesday"; while the imperfect refers to a repetitive action in the past: "I used to go to the store every Tuesday".

To further complicate your life, in Iberian Spanish the preterite, especially referring to actions recently completed, is often replaced by the present perfect, as is the normal case in French, where the grammatical preterite is almost never used in conversation.

Answer 3

They are both past tenses. One difference is that the preterite is the simple past tense, and it implies an action that either only happened once, or was bounded in duration. The imperfect implies an actual that occurred either continuously or repeatedly over a period of time without a particular ending. One example: if you're talking about the way somebody used to be when he was a child, you'd say "el era"; but if you want to talk about an event that occurred in the past, you'd say "fue."

Another difference is that because of its boundedness, some common verbs change meaning slightly when they are put into the preterite tense. For example:

saber - imperfect sabía = "knew", preterite supo="found out"
querer - imperfect quería="wanted", preterite quiso="meant to"
poder - imperfect podía="could have", pudo="could have and did"

Finally, the two tenses are often combined into a sentence where something was happening and something else came along and interrupted the ongoing action:

Estaba en casa cuando mi esposa llegó.="I was at home when my wife got there."
El hablaba por telefono y alguien tocó la puerta.="He was talking on the phone and somebody knocked on the door."

Answer 4

they are both u used for past tense, however they have different uses. the imperfect is used for actions incomplete, old habits and past descriptions such as weather,age,time,feelings and dates in the past. the preterite is for what begins and for uninterupted, 1 time events.

Answer 5

preterite is past tense