This week on the Real Fast Spanish Tips podcast we will be looking at another Spanish past tense.

This Spanish past tense is called ‘Pretérito Indefinido’ or ‘Pasado Indefinido’.

As well as introducing a new past tense, we introduce a new guest. The new guest on the podcast is a friend of mine from Barcelona, Maria Piñero.

As Maria is from Barcelona, it means she can speak Catalan as well as Spanish.

I want to keep things simple, so for starters, I’m going to avoid asking Maria to show us her Catalan. But if we have enough requests from the listeners we might preview some Catalan in an upcoming episode.

I’m excited to have another guest from Spain to help us develop our skills further. Maria has a lot tutoring experience in Spanish and provides a great opportunity for some more Spanish conversation practice.

Now, with introductions aside, we can start to look at today’s discussion topic.

A few weeks ago we introduced the ‘past imperfect‘ Spanish tense. In tip number 15 ‘A Hack For The Past‘, we introduced the ‘present perfect’ tense. Make sure you know these two tenses first. So if you need to do some revision head back before continuing on. If you are happy with those tenses then you can look at the ‘Pretérito Indefinido’ tense or Spanish past simple tense.

Unlike the ‘past imperfect’ tense, the past simple tense is used for describing events that have a defined beginning and end.

If an event happened last week and it represented a specific moment in time you will use the past simple tense. If the event happened repeatedly in the past and had no defined start and finish you use the past imperfect tense.

And sometimes you will need to use the two tenses in combination. We will look at a few cases of this in the podcast.

Examples from the episode:

The past simple conjugation of ‘hablar’:

I spoke – Yo hablé.

You spoke – Tú hablaste.

He spoke – Él habló.

We spoke – Nosotros hablamos.

You-all spoke – Vosotros hablasteis.

They spoke – Ellos hablaron.

The past simple conjugation of ‘comer’:

I ate – Yo comí.

You ate – Tú comiste.

He ate – Él comió.

We ate – Nosotros comimos.

You-all ate – Vosotros conisteis.

They ate – Ellos comieron.

The past simple conjugation of ‘decir’:

I said – Yo dije.

You said – Tú dijiste.

He said – Él dijo.

We said – Nosotros dijimos.

You-all said – Vosotros dijisteis.

They said – Ellos dijeron.

She told me that… – Me dijo que…

I told her that … – Le dije que…

You told me…. – Me dijiste…

I met a guy and his name was Jose – Conocí un hombre y su nombre era Jose.

Last week, I was at the movies and the movie was very entertaining – La semana pasada estuve en el cine y la pelicula era muy entretenida.

Asian – Asiático.

Cinnamon – Canela.

You can get access to the Spanish podcast transcripts and English translations here.

The post Tips 055: Pretérito Indefinido – The Simple Spanish Past Tense appeared first on Real Fast Spanish.