When to use estar in sentences which need the imperfect tense
I just thought I'd put this out there as I'm trying to get a handle on when to use the progressive form of the imperfect vs the straight imperfect form. Can anyone explain what the difference is?
For example:
estaba hablando vs hablaba etc
So far (with a little help from Lazarus) I'm thinking that even though you're talking about the past, the progressive construction (estar + gerund) somehow focuses on that particular moment showing that the original action was ongoing when the next thing happened & often (although not always) interrupted it. Of course I could (and most likely am) way off but here's an example.
Estaba hablando con él cuándo vi mi madre.
I was speaking with him (and in that particular moment of speaking with him) I saw my mother.
Hablaba con él mientras se fui de compras mi madre.
I was speaking (over a period of time) with him while my mother went shopping.
Ok free shot, what am I missing, any hints or tips?? Please feel free to comment 
16 Answers
Mmmm... I'm a bit late here. I need to make one thing clear: many sentences do not need any tense: the choice of tense will give the sentence a particular flavour, but that doesn't mean that one is necessarily wrong while the other one is right. Often both will be acceptable, while some other times one will be unacceptably weird. This is not a true / false dichotomy, but a matter of perspective.
Languages are used to convey feelings, perspectives, images, thoughts, but are not very effective with pure logic, so we need to understand a language in terms of 'how they sounds'. There are many cases where you can swap imperfect and preterite, or imperfect and continuous imperfect; the difference is just a matter of perspective; it depends on how you want your listeners to 'visualize' the whole thing, and not a matter of getting some sort of random grammar rules right.
I think you should avoid RIGHT/WRONG games, and focus on "let's interpret this or that sentence to see which makes more sense", encouraging learners to understand, and avoiding the bear trap of thinking that all sentences are grammatically black or white.
I have been thinking about this, and having read the answers posted so far my suspicion reinforced: I think there are some instances where estaba+gerund can be used interchangeably with the progressive imperfect.
For example: "me interrumpieron mientras comía en el restaurante" vs. "me interrumpieron cuando estaba comiendo en el restaurante".
"Soñe qué caía al precipicio" vs. "soñé que estaba cayendo al precipicio".
"se durmió mientras manejaba" vs. "se durmió mientras estaba manejando".
I know that given a certain context, I will pick one form over the other "bacasue it sounds better" or "it feels more natural". But I really have no way of explaining, even informally, why, or if, one is "more correct" than the other....
Lazarus said:
Languages are used to convey feelings, perspectives, images, thoughts, but are not very effective with pure logic, so we need to understand a language in terms of 'how they sound'.
Gekko said:
"there's just so much you can do by understanding grammar rules. After that, it's practice and learning usage and customs!"
I agree 100% and I look forward to the day that we (learners of a foreign language) all get into a groove where we keep grammar rules in mind but develop the skill of saying what we mean...having the ability to convey how we feel and think with words. Being able to do this in any language is an amazing miracle.
General question - partly to "open" this thread again.
Should I regard the Spanish past imperfect as an unbroken and / or interupted action in the past?
And should regard the past perfect continous as an action that finished in the past after an unbroken period period of time? (a single event)
Hope this makes sense - which is what I am trying to do with the progressive form of the imperfect vs the straight imperfect
English examples:
I used to go to school ..............
I was going to school............... (finished action)
I think part of the problem is sentences like:
He was going to high school when he broke his leg.
In English, this sentence has two distinct possible meanings:
He was in the act of going to the high school when something happened and his leg was broken.
His leg wasd broken during the time period he was attending high school (which might still be going on.)
In Spanish, the first would probably be imperfect progressive, while the second would just be imperfect.
With more complicated sentences, it gets harder:
It was a cold, rainy night with a fire burning in the fireplace and I was sitting on the sofa reading an archaic text when I heard a knock at the door, opened it, and saw a raven standing there.
In Spanish, the initial verbs setting the scene should be imperfect, but it is unclear to me if the verbs about sitting and reading should be changed to progressive. Also, in the English sentence it is unclear if the raven is still there and if I can still see it.
the progressive construction (estar + gerund) somehow focuses on that particular moment showing that the original action was ongoing when the next thing happened & often (although not always) interrupted it.
I have this same understanding that you would use "estar + gerund." For example, "Estaba comiendo cuando sonó el teléfono." Here we are focusing on my action of eating.
However, I feel like we could say "Comía cuando sonó el teléfono" to emphasis the interrupting action.
I, too, need some clarification on this topic (especially if my understanding is off).
MC, you said:
Estaba hablando con él cuándo vi a mi madre.
I think that you need the personal "a" here.
Hablaba con él mientras mi madre iba de compras.
I don't think that you can use the preterit here. I think that it's two ongoing actions that both require the imperfect because they are occurring simultaneously.
You use the preterit if you want to show that the action of the verb in the preterit interrupts the ongoing action of the verb in the imperfect.
If you like phrases like morphosyntactic marking, you'll love this 10 page paper on the Spanish imperfect vs. imperfect progressive
I think you handle the tenses construction pretty well.
2 actions in the past.
Now, yo hablaba makes reference to the present. The action is imperfect because it was not fully completed in the past.
yo hablaba mucho, (and....?) ahora no lo hago.
And as you said, estaba hablando is making reference to another action that took place in the past. yo estaba hablando when something else happened.
A timeline chart could be helpful to grasp the whole sense of verb tenses.
Then just when you think you might be getting a handle on it: (it was found by one researcher that)
IP was indeed used in a majority of cases to indicate an action in progress at a particular point of time, though its use was far from categorical.
Here's a couple of my favourite sentences so far:
The perfective/imperfective distinction has been characterized in various ways, including viewing a situation as a unified whole (perfective) versus taking into account its internal structure
and
... non-progressive forms do not necessarily imply non-progressive meaning (Comrie 1976). The difference between the two is that progressive meaning is overtly marked in the progressive forms ...
Good question, I was wondering about this recently as I find Estar (Imperfecto)+Gerundio must easier to use than Imperfecto.
Do you by any chance have the Practice makes Perfect book of Spanish Verb Tenses? If so page 106 and page 117 give good examples as follows:
"-ing" in the past. References to actions in the past "I was working" which give no specific length of time are in the Imperfecto:
Yo tocaba la guitarra y Juan cantaba. I was playing the guitar and John was singing.
Moving on to the progressive mood in the past it states that there are two ways to show "ing" in the past (as above) and you may use whichever you wish!!!!! Personally speaking I´m not sure about this. The second being Estar in the imperfecto plus past participle.
Estaba hablando - I was speaking. Estábamos comiendo - We were eating.
There is then an exercise for Indefinido and Imperfecto mix, but no mention of mixing Estar (Imperfecto)+Past Participle (Gerund) with anything.
If this does´nt answer your question it has been revision for me!
Thank you everyone for your thoughts - I'm off to digest Lorenzo's pdf which looks great and I'll be back if I get further enlightenment
Any takers?
@ Ian
I don't think it's quite so clear cut Ian. As Lazarus pointed out sometimes their use overlaps and it's not so much that you can only used one or the other but that you can choose which one you want depending on what you're stressing.
Regarding your question:
Should I regard the Spanish past imperfect as an unbroken and / or interupted action in the past?
actually if you think about it the imperfect is more often than not chosen to describe a scene that is about to be interrupted.
I was reading when the doorbell went.
reading / imperfect doorbell ringing / preterite
Could the imperfect progressive be used here? Well to me the use of reading in the imperfect puts the actual stress on the doorbell going
Leía cuando ...
if however I wanted to stress the reading part I would probably change to the IP or even move cuando to the beginning as well as change to the imperfect progressive.
When I was reading the doorbell went.
Estaba leyendo cuando ..... or Cuando estaba leyendo ....
So at the end of the day - as we know, language evolves and the use of the imperfect versus the progressive imperfect has likely been affected by contact with speakers of the English language.
The results of the current study, although mixed, provide some evidence suggesting contact-induced language change may be occurring in U.S. Spanish in the area of *IM and *IP usage.
So (although this process has, I believe, given me a little more of an insight into how to use the IM and IP) as my learned friend Gekko recently told me, "there's just so much you can do by understanding grammar rules. After that, it's practice and learning usage and customs!"
- IM imperfect, IP imperfect progressive
