The Everything Spanish Grammar Book: All The Rules You Need To Master Espanol (Everything®) by Julie Gutin Page B

____________________ explico.
    Translate into Spanish:
    1. I like to dance.
    ____________________________________________
    2. She loves flowers.
    ____________________________________________
    3. You (informal) have five dollars left.
    ____________________________________________
    4. They lack money.
    ____________________________________________
    5. We are interested in your stories.
    ____________________________________________
    Fill in the correct reflexive verb and reflexive pronoun:
    1. Ustedes ____________________(cepillarse) los dientes dos veces por día.
    2. Nosotros ____________________(mudarse) a Nueva York el próximo junio.
    3 . Ramón ____________________(afeitarse) cada mañana.
    4 . Ellos ____________________(enterarse) de todos mis secretos.
    5. Nuestro jefe ____________________(vestirse) bien, aún los fines de semana.
    To check your answers, refer to the answer key in Appendix D.

C HAPTER 11

In the Past
    AT THIS POINT, you’ve reviewed many types of verb and verbal constructions in the context of the present tense. The next few chapters will review other tenses—the past, future, conditional, and compound tenses—as well as subjunctive and command moods.
    Let’s begin with the past tense. In Spanish, there are a few ways to express actions occurring in past tense. In addition to the compound past tenses (covered in Chapter 14), Spanish past tenses include preterite, imperfect, and past progressives.
    What You Did—the Preterite
    The preterite tense, el pretérito , is used to describe actions that occurred and were completed in the past:
    Ernesto llegó al restaurante a las cinco.
    Ernesto arrived at the restaurant at five.
    Ya acabó la película.
    The movie ended already.
    Conocí a Eliana en una de las fiestas de Javier.
    I met Eliana at one of Javier’s parties.
    For each of these sentences, the action is definite and refers to an event that happened at a particular time, not one that took place regularly. To distinguish preterite tense from other past tenses in Spanish, you might want to think of it as the concrete past, used to describe particular events and actions. (More on the differences between the preterite and the imperfect past is to follow later in the chapter.)
    Preterite Endings
    To conjugate verbs in the preterite, drop the infinitive ending and add the appropriate preterite ending. Note that –ER and –IR verbs share identical endings:
–AR Verbs
–ER and –IR Verbs
 
 
é     amos
í     imos
 
 
aste     asteis
iste     isteis
 
 
ó     aron
ió     ieron
 
 
    Irregular Forms
    The preterite conjugations have quite a few irregularities, but not as many as the present indicative forms. For instance, –AR and –ER verbs do not undergo a vowel change (e > ie or o > ue) in the stem.
    Vowel Change in –IR Verbs
    Remember verbs like gemir (to moan), repetir (to repeat), mentir (to lie), and preferir (to prefer)? The first two undergo a e > i change, while the last pair are e > ie verbs. All of these verbs have an e > i irregularity in the preterite, but the trick is this: Only the third-person forms undergo the vowel change:
gemí
gemimos
gemiste
gemisteis
gimió
gimieron
preferí
preferimos
preferiste
preferisteis
prefirió
prefirieron
    The same kind of change occurs with –IR verbs that have an o > u stem change in the present indicative. Again, the change only affects third-person conjugations in the preterite. Take a look at preterite conjugations of dormir (to sleep) and morir (to die):
dormí
dormimos
dormiste
dormisteis
durmió
durmieron
morí
morimos
moriste
moristeis
murió
murieron
    Spelling Modification Verbs
    All but one preterite ending begins with “i”; the only exception is –é (first person singular of –AR verbs). This is why –AR verbs with a stem that ends in c, g, or z require a spelling modification conjugated in the yo form to retain correct pronunciation with the –é ending.
    In –AR verbs with a stem ending in