past tense? ??!

Question

How do you drive (manejar) in past tense?

Welcome to the forum. =) - NikkiLR, Mar 23, 2012

If you look at the top menu, you will see 'conjugate'. You can type in any verb to see the conjugations of every tense. =) - NikkiLR, Mar 23, 2012

Answer 1

That would depend on which past tense you wish to use. If you wish to use the preterite (you drove once at a specific time and the action of driving is completed), then you would say yo manejé, tú manejaste, él manejó, nosotros manejamos, vosotros manejasteis, or ellos manejaron. If you wish to use the imperfect (the driving was a habitual, repeated action in the past), then you would say yo manejaba, tú manejabas, él manejaba, nosotros manejábamos, vosotros manejabais, or ellos manejaban. For the past perfect, you would use haber conjugated in the imperfect with manejado. And then there's the past subjunctive tense, which is quite another can of worms (if you're interested, the conjugation of manejar in the past subjunctive is manejara, manejaras, manejara, manejáramos, manejarais, manejaran; if you don't know what the subjunctive is, then disregard this). I hope that something in this helps!