can u help me wit the imperfect tense in spanish

Question

for example: when i was a child,i used to run alot

Answer 1

Welcome. A few tips on how to get help:

1. Use proper English in your requests, there are users that are here to improve their English skills, and in return for their help in improving our Spanish, we need to show them proper use of English.
2. Ask a Specific question- It is not clear whether you want general help, or help with that specific sentence.
3. Make an effort yourself- If you go to the machine translator and try it, or just try it on your own, and, if unsure of the answer, post the result, someone will be glad to help you. If you show no effort at all, you will get the generic response you got from JulianChivas to try the translator.

If you are looking for general help- here are some great resources at this site (they can be found under the more tab-reference):

Imperfect

Spanish Verbs

If you are looking just for help with that one sentence, post your best try.

Answer 2

Are you asking why that sentence needs the imperfect rather than preterite? In grammar books as I remember, they give all the instances where the preterite and imperfect are used, so it's kind of complicated. Buy generally speaking, the imperfect is used to describe indefinate happenings in the past and not specific events. Mental processes and age in the past are imperfect. Cuando vivíamos el DF yo tenía 14 años. If you put in a specific time you need the preterite. Hace 3 años vivimos en el DF.

Certain verbs actually change meaning depending of whether they're in the preterite or imperfect. All of them don't come to mind now for me right now. Do you have a grammar book? No quise ir means that I refused to go. No quería ir means just that I didn't want to go. Supe que means I discovered that and sabía que means I knew that. No pude means I couldn't manage to (implying that I tried to) and no podía means I wasn't able to. There are others but I can't think of them now.

I think that getting the preterite/imperfect right is harder than getting the subjunctive/indicative right. Usually sub/ind is cut and dried. What I have trouble with is remembering that in Spanish you have to put things in the subjunctive because we don't do it in English. I screw that up all the time.

Any grammar book can explain all this very well and I recommend that you look it up. Good luck with your Spanish!

Answer 3

It just takes a few clicks into the translator and you´ll have the correct answer.

¡Saludos!