The difference between queria and quise

Question

How to translate: No quise abrir la puerta No queria abrir la puerta

Answer 1

How to translate: No quise abrir la puerta No queria abrir la puerta

I am not going to give advice on how to do proper translation, because there is no morphological equivalent to these tenses, which is what most people are after, but the difference between those two sentences is the fundamental difference between preterite and imperfect: the former indicates the end of the action, while imperfect doesn't (whether it later finishes or not).

With preterite the story goes like this: at some specific point in time you decide you do not want to open the door, and that's it. End of the story. You no longer consider whether you want to open the door or not. When that happened, someone could have said something like "A moment ago, he did not want to open the door".

With imperfect the story goes like this: for some unspecified length of time whose start we know nothing about, you did not want to open the door, and we do not know how long your unwillingness to open the door continued for. Maybe you still don't want to open the door. Imperfect tense doesn't give this information. This has to be specified separately. When that happened, someone could have said "He doesn't want to open the door".

Answer 2

No quise abrir la puerta = He refused to open the door.

No queria abrir la puerta = He didn't want to open the door.

Answer 3

Hm, I wouldn't say it is comparable to that sentence, Kiwi.

'No quería abrir la puerta' simply means 'I didn't have any intention of opening the door". However in the end you might have opened it anyway (or not).

'No quise abrir la puerta' definitely means 'I did not open the door, because I didn't want to'. Perhaps someone else opened it, but I certainly didn't.

By the way, speaking of that sentence you mentioned, "Fui en un viaje con mi padre porque quisimos acampar" sounds goofy, at least to me. Almost like saying "I went on a trip with my father because we decided to camp" (it's hard to describe, but it's like saying that the reason to do something it's because it was decided to be done). "porque queríamos acampar" sounds better in my opinion. It gives the idea that you had that in mind prior to making the decision, rather than out of the blue.

Answer 4

I asked a similar question of Tony Riva the other day and I'm sure he won't mind if I cut and paste part of his answer here - I hope you find it helpful too - thanx again Tony

Fui en un viaje con mi padre porque queríamos acampar

Fui en un viaje con mi padre porque quisimos acampar

I don't think either is wrong... the problem is that the second one sounds like it was something that came up in that second... "so it was like 8 am and suddenly we felt like camping so we packed our stuff and left"... that's what the second sentence sounds like.

The first one sounds more about having the idea for a while