el estaba pintando la casa vs el pintaba la casa.

Question

which is correct between the two structures?do they give the same meaning?which is he was painting the house??

Welcome to the forum . Please remember to use proper capitaliztion and punctuation in all of your posts. - Yeser007, Nov 23, 2011

Answer 1

Both are correct

Welcome to the forum.

Answer 2

Both are correct. They often do mean the same thing, because both the imperfect and the imperfect progressive imply a continuing action in the past. In your example, they would be more or less equivalent.

There are cases where the imperfect and the imperfect progressive are not equivalent. I think, for instance, that with verbs of emotion one would use the imperfect over the imperfect progressive. For instance,

Quería estar feliz, not

Estaba queriendo estar feliz.

what if i turn it into a passive voice?the house is being painted. How would i translate that?tnx - chololo, Nov 23, 2011