what is the difference between fue and era?

Question

what is the difference between 'fue' and 'era'?

Welcome to SpanishDict. The use of proper capitalization is required at SD. - rac1, Apr 10, 2015

If you can be bothered to complate your SD profile I might be more interested in helping you. - ian-hill, Apr 10, 2015

You could at least say thank you to the member that answered you. - rac1, Apr 10, 2015

Answer 1

Basically the difference between the preterit and the imperfect, this link below describes the special challenges for the English speaker with this distinction in the case of the verb ser- keep in mind fue is also a preterit form of ir.

http://spanish.about.com/od/usingparticularverbs/a/era-fue.htm

This is 2 pages and too long for me to bring over, but it is well worth reading.

Here is just the introduction, as a teaser:

Conceptually, the differences between the two simple past tenses of Spanish are fairly easy to grasp: The preterite typically refers to actions that took place at a definite time in the past, while the imperfect tense refers to actions that occurred numerous times and/or didn't have a definite end.

However, for the foreigner, applying those concepts to the past tenses of ser can be problematic, partly because it seems in practice that native speakers commonly use the imperfect of ser (that's era in the third-person singular) for states of being that had a definite end, while an application of the rule above might suggest use of the preterite (fue in the third-person singular).