"estaba and fui'

Question

is there a difference between estaba and fui. I thought they both meant 'I was or I went'. Are they interchangeable?

Welcome to the site Jeff. Happy learnings! - sinsonte, May 16, 2012

Hola Jeff. Good to have you here. Please remember capitalization as others will be learning from you as well. Thanks! - rac1, May 16, 2012

Hola, everyone ! could you please tell me how to highlight words while posting a question or answer. I didn't wanted to ask this Q in Q and A because this is not related to Spanish, that's why I am asking here. Gracias:) Sorry ,for this stupid Question. - ZAYESHA, May 16, 2012

Answer 1

estaba is of ESTAR (imperfect form)

fui is of SER and IR (preterite form) [yes they use the same preterite forms]

Do these lessons, and you will end up making it to the lesson about the past tense forms. Of course you can just skip to the particular unit, but go through all of them.

Answer 2

You can use the conjugator for that, but those are two different verbs, fui is preterite for ser and ir, estaba is imperfect preterit for estar, so no interchanging is possible there