Fue, fui & Era when talking about time
If wanna say: -it was 5 o'clock -I was here at 9 o'clock yesterday etc. What tense exactly should I use? It seems they both describe time, but what's the difference?
2 Answers
I used translator a while ago. When I write: "it was one year ago" it translates: "Fue hace un año" then I write: "it was two years ago" it translates: "Era hace dos años". After that I got more confused...
Sometimes a machine translator needs a complete sentence and other times it works better with just a clause, so it depends on the entire sentence. In your case it obviously needs more information, but this is no guarantee of accuracy. People always need a complete sentence for accuracy to give translations.
Your clause "it was one year ago" with no other information makes no sense, so don´t expect anything accurate. You must also take into account that languages work differently from one another. If you want to say, ie: "It was one year ago that I went to live in Madrid", then we say "Hace un año que me fui a vivir a Madrid".
Context must always be provided.
You use the imperfect with time in the past. Eran las 5.
I was here at 9 is something entirely different. For location, you use estar. And because you're specifying the precise moment when you were here, you probably want the preterite.
rac1's correction is because there are English learners on this site, and we want to model correct usage.
