viví o vivía

Question

A: ¿Sabías que yo hablo árabe?

B: ¿En serio? No lo sabía.

A: Sí. Cuando era niño viví en Egipto.

Above is a conversation in my learnig material.

My question is: can I replace viví with vivía?

If not, why not?

If yes, then which one is better?

Thanks for help.

Answer 1

My question is: can I replace viví with vivía?

Yes, you can.

If yes, then which one is better?

Better? Better for what? All languages have many different ways of expressing one idea. Your normally chose your words to try to get people to interpret them in a particular way, so that there is an adequate communication between all of you. If you say "viví", it will be somewhat strange if you suddenly continued your conversation giving more details about what happened when you used to live in Egypt, because that tense suggests that you've said enough about it and you want to talk about something else. If you say "vivía", most people would be expecting more details about what happened when you were living there, so if you don't say anything else after that, it will feel strange, almost confusing. But then, not all situations are so black or white, and sometimes the difference does not matter much, or people are not that concerned about the way other people understand their words. So, which one is better? It depends on what communicative expectations you want your audience to have: are you going to talk further about your life in Egypt?

Answer 2

Are you familar with the difference between saber in the imperfect (sabía) and in the preterite (supe)?

There is no such difference. It is a myth! What happens is that the English translations in different cases are rendered using different verbs. This is what that false rule says:

sabía = I knew/used to know

supe = I found out

Let's disprove this once and for all! First some counterexamples where "supe" does not mean "I found out"

No supe qué hacer = I didn't know what to do

Entonces supe qué hacer = Then I knew what to do

Lo supe todo el tiempo = I knew it all the time

Now sentences in other tenses where "saber" can also be translated as "find out":

Lo sabrás mañana = You'll find out tomorrow

Si te diera una pista sabrías inmediatamente quién soy = ...you'd find out...

So what's happening here? Easy: if you find something out, you've just learnt something knew, now you know it. The imperfect tense, giving no clues about the start or end of the action, is not suitable to express the point where you go from not knowing something to knowing it, which is what to find out means. Therefore, being an ongoing action, it can only be interpreted as "to know". "Supe", on the other hand, being a suitable tense to express transitions (finished events), it often translates very well as "found out", but the same can happen in other tenses, as I've shown above. The English translation needs to switch from "knew" to "found out" because English can't express this difference through tenses (there is only one past); when a language doesn't have a tool to express something, it does it using a different approach; in this case, use a different verb instead of a different tense. The meaning of "saber" does not change -the choice of verb required to translate it into English does.

Answer 3

I would leave it in the preterite if you no longer live in Egypt. Which I am assuming is why say when I was a boy. The context has no reason for referring to the action as ongoing or habitual. It is an action completed and done with in the past.

I was more interested in the "No lo sabía".

Are you familar with the difference between saber in the imperfect (sabía) and in the preterite (supe)?

I didn't know it or I didn't realize it.

sabía vs supe

Read ChocolateLover's answer: there is no such difference in Spanish -only in the English translation! - lazarus1907, Sep 12, 2010

Answer 4

@lazarus1907:

Today I read another conversation in my learning material:

A: ¡Francisco! Soy Alejandro. ¿Te acuerdas de mí?

B: Sí, me acuerdo de ti. Esta es mi esposa Mariana.

A: Encantado de conocerte, Mariana. Francisco y yo éramos amigos en la universidad.

C: Él ha hablado de ti. Encantada de conocerte, Alejandro.

In the third part above, Alejandro uses "éramos". According to your "further or not" principle, I wonder if "fuimos" would be more appropriate since the conversation doesn't continue more about things in their university time. Is this my misunderstanding? Or "ser" is just exceptional? Or, as you said, sometimes it just doesn´t matter?

Answer 5

I bealive there is no diference, yo vivi, yo vivia they both are past tense and I use them both.

They are both past, one's preterite and one's imperfect, and they do have somewhat different meanings. - KevinB, Sep 12, 2010