Different past tense forms in the same sentence.

Question

This spanish sentence is from Rosetta Stone and I'm confused as to why first there is the Imperfect form and then the preterit form is used. "Cuando estaba en el estación de trenes, comí un sándwich." Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

When a clause sets the stage for something that happened in the past, the imperfect tense is used for that clause.

Kirk, that's it precisely. The imperfect and the preterite frequently appear together. The imperfect is used to set the scene and the preterite used to say what occurred. - padrin, Jul 10, 2013

Answer 2

You have two types of past here in Spanish '

"Estaba" this tense is a longer past- While waiting. Past imperfect. An ongoing event.

"Comí¨ is a short or more current past 'I ate a sandwich. Preterite. Simple past.

Answer 3

Translate that to English, and see why?

EDIT:

Unlike my "colleagues" I don't know grammar, but i can handle it at my level.

Compare the following phrases and forget for a moment about Spanish:

All these actions are happening in the past, and some might have not ended yet...

When I was doing something at that place, I did something else.

When I was doing something at that place, I also was doing yet something else (at the same time) when something happened.

See the diff now?

When I was in the train station, I ate a sandwich. In English they are both simply past tense. I still don't understand why the past tense forms are different in spanish. - mirchu23, Jul 10, 2013

That is because we do not have the imperfect tense in English - everything is "perfect" :) - ian-hill, Jul 10, 2013

We could say "While I was waiting in the train station I ate a sandwich" the -ing form indiactes a period of time as does the imperfect in Spanish. - ian-hill, Jul 10, 2013

Answer 4

Sorry, I couldn't get the hyperlink feature to work properly when I posted a few minutes ago. Go to Learn > Spanish Grammar > Verbs and then click on the link for: Preterit vs. Imperfect - differences and signifier phrases.

Yes this did help! Thanks! - mirchu23, Jul 10, 2013

Answer 5

This link should be helpful: