tu edad- Telling someone your age

Question

When telling someone your age, will you always use the Imperfect Tense, or are there times when you can use the Preterite Tense?

-Vivi

Answer 1

What my Spanish teach said, was to use the imperfect. "Cuando tenía cinco años, ___. " He said that it was an idea. The preterite had a definate ending. The imperfect was a indefiniate period of time. "I when I was 5, I had a dog." that doesn't really give a specific time period.

One of my teachers said that even though it's an idea, the timespan is when yoiu were five, which is definite. - freeze10108, Sep 21, 2009

Answer 2

I actually don't think that the imperfect is used very often to describe one's age, as it doesn't make that much sense to say, "When I was sixteen, I was naive," if you're still sixteen (of course, this is from an English speakers perspective). Preterit tense would be used when you're no longer the age you're describing, and present tense used when you are the age you are describing.