help me with the preterite tense of verb

Question

what is the correct preterite tense for the sentence

catilina ------------------------- (poner) la mese anoche.

Incidentally, are you quite sure about that word "mese" ??? - Janice, NOV 1, 2009

Answer 1

Here it is, right here, Clementine90. And the whole conjugation is here, too: poner

I found it under "More -> Conjugation" near the top of this site just above the banner ad.

If what you are asking, on the other hand, it which one to pick, I would go with the "pretérito indefindio" ...soooo strange because when you say "anoche" then the past is definitely past. Why it is called "pretérito indefindo" -- well it actually isn't here at Span¡shD!ct ...but often it is -- I don't know.

perterite (completed in past) She set the table last night.. indefinite (she was setting the table when something occured) or She used to set the table. Preterite is the correct choice here. - 0074b507, NOV 1, 2009

Answer 2

(Please take note that proper grammar is a requirement on this forum, if you return please edit your post to include capitalization and punctuation.)

I do believe this is a situation where you are supposed to make an attempt first, unless you identify the specifics of why you are confused at least.

I will help you make your first attempt. The conjugation of a verb is dependent upon who or what the subject is, based on this you can determine if the verb needs to be in the first person, second person or third person form. You can also determine whether the verb needs to be conjugated in the singular or plural form.

Here our subject is "Catilina." I'm assuming this is a female name.

Based on this we know that the subject is third person singular (we are talking about "her" and there is only one of "her.")

Now you can go to the conjugation chart of poner, which is somewhat of an irregular verb (it follows rules, so some people say this doesn't qualify as irregular but its rules are fairly complicated so for this instance you might as well consider it irregular) and look for the third person singular form of the conjugated verb in the preterit. The singular form is on the left, and the order of "1st, 2nd, and 3rd" person goes 1st on the top, 2nd in the middle, 3rd on the bottom.