Past continuous tense – “ar” verbs

Last week we started looking at the “past continuous” “past descriptive” or “imperfect” tense and we finished off by saying that the main difficulty of this tense for us is finding the right translation into English, as it varies a little depending on the context. Apart from that, we saw that the actual meaning of it is pretty straightforward and putting it together is extremely easy.

I think I’ll start today by proving that last point first! We have learnt many times before that all verbs are made up of two parts, the root and the ending. Whenever we make changes to verbs we have to keep these two parts firmly in mind and treat them differently as they carry different information. The root gives us the main meaning of the word, such as eat, drink, play etc. The ending tells us who is doing these things and when they are doing them. In infinitive verbs the endings are –ar, -er, and –ir and the roots are whatever is left, be it made up of one letter or ten.

So, let’s take an –ar verb, such as mirar. Our root is “mir” giving us the idea of “look” and our ending is –ar. To form this “past continuous tense” we change the –ar ending as follow: -aba -ábamos - abas -abais

- aba -aban This gives us: miraba (I was looking)

mirábamos (we were looking)

mirabas (you were looking) mirabais (you were looking – plural)

miraba (he/she was looking) miraban (they were looking)

The translations could also be “I looked” or “I used to look”, depending on the context, but the idea is always focused on an action that lasts some period of time. Another thing to notice is that the first person singular and third person singular are identical, so sometimes we need to put in the word “yo”, “él” or “ella” or the name of a person, to clarify which one is being used. Remember as well that the third person form also includes the formal “usted” version.

Although it is rather difficult to get this over in print, we also need to be aware of where the word stress goes on each word. I will illustrate this here with the use of capital letters, as follows: mirAba, mirAbas, mirAba, mirÁbamos, mirAbais, mirAban. As ever it is very important to get the beat of the word right as this will affect whether we are understood or not when we are speaking. It is the rhythm or beat of the word that gives it its shape and makes it meaningful to the ear, especially when linked with other words in a quickly spoken sentence.

Now here’s the good news – every single “–ar” verb changes in exactly the same way, there are no irregular verbs whatsoever. Even “Estar” goes “estaba, estabas” etc. and all those horrible “root changing” ones in the present tense, keep their roots exactly as they are in this one. As my students know I am particularly averse to using the words “always” or “never” about language, but this is one of those rare moments!

So, now you can confidently talk about things that happened habitually or continuously in the past, provided you stick to –ar verbs! For example – “En Inglaterra me levantaba a las 7. Viajaba al trabajo en autobús. Tomaba té a todas horas. Trabajaba cinco días a la semana. Jugaba al golf los domingos. Compraba ropa en el centro de la ciudad. Cenaba en casa a las 7. Me acostaba a las 11.” As you can see, the possibilities are endless!

Next week we will look at what happens to –er and –ir verbs (which are exactly the same as each other) and after that we will see the irregular verbs, if which there is a grand total of three: SER, VER and IR.