Preterit vs imperfect help!

Question

"Also I participated in many extracurricular activities throughout the week." is "participar" in preterit or imperfect form? Also how do I say "throughout the week"? Gracias!

Of course nothing in English is ever "imperfect" ha ha - ian-hill, Jun 14, 2013

One way of deciding is if you say "I used to participate etc. ............ "used to" is about the only way we can make the imperfect in English. - ian-hill, Jun 14, 2013

Answer 1

Shaka, you said,

"Also I participated in many extracurricular activities throughout the week." is "participar" in preterit or imperfect form? Also how do I say "throughout the week"? Gracias!

Shaka, I would advise you to use the preterite/simple past form of the verb, participar here as you are referring to a completed action not an habitual one!

Habitual actions, eg: I was doing /used to do.. require the imperfect indicatve: eg 1 Cuando era niño mi hermano y yo jugabamos en el parque todos los días = When I was a child, my brother and I used to play in the park every day.

2.Trabajaba como abogado en la cuidad = He used to work as a lawyer in the city.

Throughout the week: How do you say this phrase? Well, it depends on whether you are using it as a preposition or as an adverb and also the context How do you plan to use it?

For your sentence, I would say: Participé en muchas (o varias) actividades extracurriculares durante la semana/ o Participé en muchas actividades extracurriculares toda la semana.

As a preposition: (in time) It rained continuously throughout the weekend = Llevó sin parar (durante) todo la semana.

(in time) She listened in silence throughout - Escuchó en silencia desde el principio hasta el fin.

Source of examples for phrase: throughout the week: Oxford Spanish Dictionary (English section) Others,. my own examples.

I hope this helps you

thank you so much! great explanation! this really helped me a ton - shaka3736, Jun 14, 2013

Answer 2

The preterit is used to show a completed action that has occurred, ergo participar is in the preterit.

but if they participated multiple times over a certain length of time i.e 'throughout the week' it would be imperfect as it is an action that happened more than once over a set amount of time. - Lozz1, Jun 13, 2013

I think that there are some situations for which either can be used but as I am not a native Spanish speaker or an expert on this I will not comment - FELIZ77, Jun 13, 2013

Spelling self- correction: habitual - FELIZ77, Jun 13, 2013

Lozz, for the imperfect to be required I think habitaul needs to be much more than a few times during a particular week but rather needs to be an established pattern of behaviour over some extended period of time, ie many years - FELIZ77, Jun 13, 2013

Answer 3

I would say something like:

También/ademas participaba en varias actividades extraexcolares durante la semana

It seems like a gray area to me. neither the imperfect or preterit sound wrong to me. it seems that the English sentence could be translated in different ways. - Kylew, Jun 13, 2013

I might be wrong but your sentence in Spanish would seem to translate as " I used to participate in several activities during the week." it almost has the air of a narrative with the person describing something in the dissent past. - Kylew, Jun 13, 2013

Kylew you are correct the imperfect suggests habitual actions ie: I was doing/used to do - FELIZ77, Jun 13, 2013