Preterito vs. Preterito Impefecto
Just a (hopefully) quick question to clear this up as to when to use which tense.
As an example, if I were to say "I fell over/down and then I got up" and then translating to Spanish gives us: "Me caí y entonces (luego?) me levanté".
Translating this sentence from English to Spanish gives us this answer but as I understand, the imperfect would be used in the first instance as I am continuing on with what happened after the completed action (I fell). Therefore, I would say: "me caía y entonces me levanté".
From what I have learned, the imperfect is translated as; "Was/were doing something" and "would do/used to do something". So in English my example would translate as "I was falling over but then I got up". Obviously this sounds a little odd in English but is this the correct way of saying it?
And, if were to continue on: "I fell over and then I got up but I hurt my leg" I would say: "me caía y entonces me levantaba pero me lesioné el peirne" So, If I ended the sentence here, I would used the preterite at the end.
¡ojala que tuvo sentido! gracias
4 Answers
Me caí y entonces (luego?) me levanté"
This is right, as samdie explains you have to fell down to be able to get up...
"me caía y entonces me levanté"
This sounds extremely weird... caía would be translated as "I was falling down"
I'd say it "Me estaba cayendo, pero me logré incorporar"... "I was falling down, but I was able to incorporate myself at the end"
Me había caído y entonces me levanté
In this one, it should be a declaration to some other asking you what happened
Me había caído, pero ya me levante
"I fell down, but I already got up"
"I was falling over but then I got up"
You can't very well get up until after you've finished falling down (though you might grab onto something and prevent your actually falling down).
Although the imperfect is often used to describe what was going on when some other event occurred, in this case you simply have two events one of which occurred after the other (both preterit)..
Though I am not fluent in Spanish, it seems to me that you would need to use the pluperfect (past perfect I think it may be called?) and then use the preterit for the second part of the sentence, hence:
Me había caído y entonces me levanté
I may be wrong, but this is what I would assume to do. The Pluperfect (past perfect) is used to describe actions in the past that happened before another action in the past, i.e. Pluperfect-->Imperfect/Preterit-->Present Perfect-->Present.
/Edit/ And I wouldn't use the Imperfect in this situation, as it describes an ongoing action in the past, I would only use the Preterit because the action was completed once in the past, unless, of course, you were constantly falling over and getting up.
That makes a lot of sense actually. Even though I was "setting the scene" so to speak, describing what happened. Because those actions only happened once, the preterite would be used.
What would "me caía y entonces me levantaba pero me lesioné el peirne" actually be translated/interpreted as if someone was to say such? or would it just not have any sense/sound silly?
Just when I thought I was getting the hang of these two tenses a spanner's been thrown in the works! thanks for the replies anyway.
