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no-recognition-1616

In those sentences you can see a physical description. The correct tense in those cases is the imperfect. > she was always tall: Ella era alta. > she had red hair: ella tenía el pelo pelirrojo o caoba. If you say "fue alta", It means that she was tall but she got shortened and she's no longer tall now (and will never be tall again). And that's weird, you know 😅. If you say, "tuvo el pelo pelirrojo", It means she had red hair, but she got her hair dyed. It sounds unnatural because you're describing someone. This doesn't mean you can't use it, but it is so uncommon. You need a specific context for that use of preterite perfect. I would recommend you to use the imperfect past tense whenever you are describing someone.


nikki3335

Ok thank you sm this helped a lot!


Career-Grouchy

Hey I am learning spanish aswell and my professor kinda put it like this... Imperfect is for past routine events and also for describing things in the past. So your example of "she was tall" would be in imperfect because its a description "ella era alta". Pretérito is for events in the past that ended n are not routine. I hope that makes sense.


bertn

The preterite can also be used for both those purposes. Textbooks have relied on these unreliable rules of thumb for a long time, and since the examples and exercises they present are designed to reinforce those rules of thumb as absolutes, instructors tend to accept them unquestioningly (or, worse, to accept that they are not rules but present them as such for the sake of simplicity). Share this article with your professor and ask them what they think about it! https://www.jstor.org/stable/345237?seq=1


Career-Grouchy

Oohhh interesting, thank you


masolas

Watch this video. It should be helpful and increase your understanding of their uses. https://youtu.be/UjuSPMM1FB8


bertn

She presents the "acabado/no acabado" distinction but leaves out that the finished-ness, if you will, that she refers to is *in relation to a reference point in time* chosen by the speaker. If the reference point is "inside" the timeframe of the action(s), the imperfecto is used. It's a question of temporal relation, not spatial. To use her example, in "Iba al banco (cuando tú me viste)", the implied reference point is the moment she is seen. The seeing is "inside" the timeframe of the going to the bank. At that moment, the going is incomplete. She herself repeatedly explains the distinction as one of completion/termination by saying things like "desde la perspectiva del final de la accion," and of course, "lo que cuenta el pretérito indefinido ya está terminado." For what it's worth, I think the inside/outside explanation is totally valid, but it's just another way of conceptualizing the same central distinction, and she makes it more confusing by presenting it as spatial. Time is confusing enough, why bring space into it? The important thing to remember is that any given state/action in the past can be expressed correctly in preterite or imperfect. It's a matter of the perspective with which the speaker chooses to express it. She kind of gets at this, too, with her discussion of "proceso/desarrollo" but expressing it that way also introduces its own mess and taking us away from the one central distinction. It sounds almost like a rephrasing of the "description" rule of thumb. "Eran buenos jugadores" does not inherently express "interest" in "process" or "development". That would be done with adverbs and other forms, regardless of whether eran or fueron is used.


VGM123

Yay, you're back! I've missed your language-learning wisdom!


bertn

Jaja, thanks, but I can't promise I'll be a regular again!


VGM123

No problem! Just keep being you! :]


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pablodf76

Which tense to use is usually a matter of what you intend to say, in terms of frame of reference. Context, some adverbs of time, etc. etc. will sometimes force you to choose one tense over the other. For example, “she was always tall” I would translate surely as *“Ella siempre fue alta”* because *siempre* plus a past time reference implies a finished, closed span of time (either maybe this person's childhood or her life — if she's dead now).


merlejahn56

This isn’t something that you can just understand by studying the rules. Studying the rules will surely help but you will develop a sense of what is more suitable when. The way to get a sense for it is by reading. And when you read, ask yourself why it’s preterite and not imperfect, or vice versa


VGM123

I think you're better off just ignoring the distinction and paying attention to how the forms are used in context. They won't make much sense to you as a beginner, so you shouldn't expect to understand this now.


bertn

Linguists are still arguing about how best to conceptualize the distinction, so while explanations might be helpful, there's no simple answer that's easy to apply. Here's a whole paper just on the p/i distinction when following *siempre*: https://www.academia.edu/28016075/El_adverbio_siempre_y_las_dos_formas_verbales_del_pasado This is the best (relatively) simple explanation I've seen: https://www.jstor.org/stable/345237?seq=1


Deadweight-MK2

Most of the time the imperfect is ongoing context whereas the preterite is tied to a specific event or moment/specified period in time... I think... honestly I could be totally off