Help with verbs....ayda con los verbos, porfavor....

Question

I need some assistance with some verbs, please.
If I want to say "The man was walking down the road."
Can I use the pretérito with the gerundio? Is this correct?
El hombre fue caminando el camino.

Or do I need to use the preterit for both?
El hombre fue caminó el camino.

Thanks.
Vance

Answer 1

Fue here is not from ser, but from ir. Literally, "he went (off) walking."

But I'm glad you asked, because Vance was probably mistakenly using fue as ser, too.

Answer 2

I'm a little confused by his sentence because it looks an awful lot like the past progressive tense.
to me using the preterite (simple past) with the gerund brings to mind saying
estuvo caminando rather than estaba caminando

using the preterite of ser with the gerund
fue caminando looks deceivingly like a verb tense.

Is this being used similar to
The man walking down the street took off...where (se) fue is the verb and gerund caminando is an adjective? adverb'

Answer 3

Vi al perro correr abajo la casa.

Vi is the preterit for yo.
We usually use the personal A for pets and other such animals.
We use the infinitive in this construction (after the preterit of the main verb).

Answer 4

James, Thanks for the quick reply. I left off the "por", my fault. The question was more aimed at past tense usage. What about this. If I wanted to state (past tense.)
I saw the dog run under the house.
Vio el perro corrió abajo la casa. Is this correct? Did I need to use pretérito for myself and the dog?
Thanks, Vance

Answer 5

El hombre fue caminando por el camino.

This is correct, but it has the nuance of "he took off walking."

El hombre fue caminó el camino.

No, that's not possible.

If you just want to say that he was walking along the road, it would be:

El hombre caminaba/andaba (or, estaba caminando) por el camino.

By the way, your thread title should be something like "walking down the road."