Preterite = Proper?
I have a question for native Spanish speakers: I took Spanish classes all 4 years of high school and not once was past imperfect taught, only preterite. 7 years later, I'm in GTMO hanging with my Puerto Rican friends and I said, "tuve hambre" and "estuve cansada" and it raised a few eyebrows. They told me to use 'tenía' and 'estaba'. When I asked why, they just told me that what I said sounded weird. I recently told my boyfriend (who is from Ecuador) about that, and he said that what I said was fine. He told me that if I spoke only using preterite, I would not sound 'weird' so to speak, but more proper. I was wondering if this was yet another regional perception issue, so I figured I'd ask for your 2 cents. How would you perceive someone who only spoke using the preterite verb tense?
EDITOR'S NOTE: I am in no way asking for a preterite/imperfect lesson. I am simply speaking hypothetically, seeing as how I studied Spanish for 4 years and was never taught the imperfect tense. Thank you.
5 Answers
You can make a long-winded explanation about why it isn't 'proper', even hypothetically speaking, to use preterite for everything instead of using the most appropriate tense, but the simple answer is no, it doesn't make your sentences more 'proper' at all. It makes your language more limited, less refined, with less ability to convey different nuances, and of course it makes you sound 'weird' or 'foreign'.
Just think of how limited your English would become if you purposefully omitted the words 'would' or 'will'.. it wouldn't make your sentences more 'proper', would it? Perhaps in Ecuador they don't use imperfect as often as in other Spanish speaking countries, but I can assure you most Spanish speakers use it all the time.
You would sound weird in Ecuador too. Everybody uses the imperfect frequently in the same manner as everywhere else.
Just out of curiosity, when you went out to dinner in a restaurant did your boyfriend tell you that the word for woman was hembra and the word for man was macho, so you should use the bathroom marked H and not the one marked M?
How would you perceive someone who only spoke using the preterite verb tense?
Most of the time, simply as bad and weird, and the rest of the time we will perceive the wrong message, so the conversation will definitely be hampered if it gets more complex than "where are you going?" and "Do you like ice-cream"?
Look at the radical change in meaning if you change "hacía" with "hice":
Me visitó cuando construía mi casa = He visited me while I was building my house.
Me visitó cuando construí mi casa = He visited me when I built my house. (after it was built)
I find it hard to believe that you took 4 years of Spanish, but were never introducted to the imperfect past tense.
How did you express time, days of week, or dates in the past (It was 6 o'clock) or discuss things like when I was a child that take only the imperfect past or paint backgrounds for stories. How could you have ever read a children's tale (era una vez or había una vez and not have wondered what verb tense was being used. For that matter, how could you have read anything in Spanish and not encountered the imperfect past.
If this is hypothetical, it is implausible.
The preterite and imperfect tenses are both used to describe past events and situations. The difference is that the preterite tense is used to tell something factual that happened (Hice el trabajo) one time or at a specific time compared to the imperfect tense that is used more for descriptions (estaba cansada) or something that was happening (cuando estaba escuchando la musica... ) or something that happened repeatedly (estudiaba en la biblioteca muchas veces). I am sure there is a lesson on the past imperfect tense on this website. I would encourage you to check it out. Often, using the preterite tense instead of the imperfect would change the meaning of your sentence or, rather, confuse the meaning of your sentence. Examples: Supe que sacaste una buena nota en la clase (saber in the preterite=to find out) compared to Sabía que estudiabas mucho (saber in the imperfect=knew). There are many others like this. I hope this helps!
