Need Help With Imperfect and Preterite in these Examples

Question

I always have the most difficult time with the imperfect and the preterite. I know the basics of when to use what, but sometimes there will be certain situations and scenario when I am not completely sure which to use.

Here is something that I said to my friend one time during a text conversation. We were speaking in Spanish. Did I use my past tense correctly.

"Creo que llegó aquí en el otoño. No sabía yo que llegó hasta que llamé a mi familia y mi hermano me dijo que ella estaba durmiendo en mi cama."

In this example, should I have used "estuvo durmiendo" instead of "estaba durmiendo". Why or why not?

Also, if there was a better way of saying what I said, please let me know. I know in Spanish, there are sometimes ways a Spanish speaker would say things differently than an English speaker.

And another thing - on my Spanish final exam last semester, there was a test question that asked us to circle either the preterite or imperfect tense of a word, depending on the sentence. What would have been the correct choice here:

"Cuando llegamos, ______________ a llover."

A) empezó B) empezaba

There is only one correct answer. I had a lot of difficulty on this one because it could go both ways, I thought. You can say...It began to rain OR It was beginning to rain. So I marked A.

Answer 1

You got the question right. The only thing I might change is "No supe que llegó" because in that sense, it is like you didn't find out, which makes more sense in the context, but like you said, sometimes there isn't a "right" answer, it only depends on what you wan to say.

yeah, like Julian said, "habia llegado" would be better. - BigMike, Feb 3, 2013

Answer 2

"Cuando llegamos, ______________ a llover."

BigMike is right because "llegar" and "empezar" in this context can both only happen in a single moment.

"Creo que llegó aquí en el otoño. No sabía yo que llegó hasta que llamé a mi familia y mi hermano me dijo que ella estaba durmiendo en mi cama."

For this one I would say "Creo que llegó aquí en el otoño. No sabía yo que había llegado (to put this past action clearly before the action of not knowing) hasta que le llamara a mi familia cuando mi hermano me dijo que ella estaba durmiendo en mi cama."

To use subjunctive or not many times depends on the nuance the speaker wants to create, but in the last clause there is only one logical structure: The way you wrote it because "dijo" was a momentary action that happened during the time of "estaba durmiendo". "Decir" started and ended, "Dormir" was a continuous past action. Also in this particular structure "le" with "familia" is optional.