Preterit accent marks

Question

I am confused at which times to use the accent marks in the preterit tense. When are they used?

Answer 1

I see you are a fairly new user to Spanishdict. I often have to go to the conjugation tool on the blue toolbar above.

Click 'Conjugate", then type in your verb. All the verb conjugations come up and you can just look under preterit to check it out.

good tip :) - Kiwi-Girl, Sep 7, 2012

Answer 2

They are used with all preterite verbs that follow the normal preterit endings:

[é, aste, ó, amos, asteis, aron]- for normal -ar verbs Ayer, hablé con mi mama. Maria cantó hace 2 días.

[í, iste, ió, imos, isteis, ieron]- for all normal -ir and -er verbs Comí toda la sopa. Ustedes recibieron sus coches.

[e, iste, o, imos, isteis, ieron]- for all irregular preterit verbs. Notice that these don;t have accents. Tuve que ir al hospital. Me dijste lo que dijo el.

Answer 3

Regular verbs take the accents on the yo and third person singular form (él, ella and usted) the regular preterite endings are as follows:

-AR VERBS (first example), -ER & -IR VERBS (second example)

yo: é Í

eg: -AR hablar: yo hablé -ER/-IR comer: yo comí escribir: yo escribí

tú: aste iste

él, ella, Ud : ó ió

eg: -AR hablar: él habló -ER/-IR comer: ella comió escribir: usted escribió

nosotros: amos imos

vosotros: asteis isteis

ellos, Uds: aron ieron

But irregular verbs need to be learnt on their own merits. This lesson may help with that - How to form the preterite tense

Answer 4

You can also put the verb into the conjugation chart on this site and school down and see all of the correct conjugations. Then you'll be able to see where to put the accents correctly, even for the really irregular verbs.