The preterite is a past tense used to describe completed actions in many languages, including English, French, and Spanish. Regular verbs are easy to form, but irregular verbs require memorization. Native speakers use it naturally, but it can be difficult for learners to determine when to use it.
The preterite is a tense used to characterize actions or events that occurred in the past. A simple English example would be: “I went to the shop.” In this sentence “walked” is the preterite because it defines an already accomplished reality. Using this grammatical tense typically requires making some spelling changes to the verb, often involving adding “ed” to the base verbs, as in the “walked” example. The preterite tense can also be referred to as preterite, past simple, past indicative, or past perfect tense.
Most Latin or Romance languages use the preterite as a common grammatical tool. Typically, these languages only use this tense to describe an action that is complete, not one that is still happening. For ongoing or continuing actions, most Romance languages require the use of a different tense, such as the imperfect verb form.
In English, regular verbs are quite easy to turn into the past tense. This usually involves adding “ed” or “ied” to the verb, so that “jump” becomes “jumped” or “study” becomes “studiato”. Some verbs, such as to sleep, require the addition of a “t” rather than an “ed”, where “slept” acts as the preterite form of “sleep”.
Irregular verbs do not follow any typical rules. The verb “go” transforms into “andò” when used in the preterite, just as “mangiare” becomes “eaten”. Those wishing to learn English or improve their grammar are often forced to study or memorize these irregular verbs and their changing forms rather than trying to follow a set rule.
In French, this tense is known as the passe simple, while verbs that describe past actions that are still in progress are referred to as l’imparfait. Spanish also has a preterite tense, known as a preterite. This tense only describes completed actions, while repeated actions, or those started in the past but not yet finished, require the use of the imperfect or present perfect tense.
Native speakers of a language often use the preterite naturally after years of listening to it in everyday speech. For those learning a new language, it is often very difficult to determine when to use this tense versus another verb form. A past action that happened only once, such as “I bought a red car,” always uses this tense. A past action that occurred a specific number of times or for a specific duration, such as “I lived in New York for six months,” also requires the use of this verb form. In-progress actions that started at a specific time, such as “It started to snow at noon,” require the use of the preterite, but continuous in-progress actions do not.
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