Spanish Imperfect

The imperfect is the cleanest tense to conjugate in Spanish. Two endings sets, three irregular verbs, and a small set of time markers that trigger it.

Regular endings

-ar verbs (hablar):

-er and -ir verbs (comer, vivir) - they share the same endings:

Two things to flag: the yo and él/ella/usted forms are identical (hablaba, comía, vivía). Spanish disambiguates with context or by reinstating the subject pronoun when needed. And the nosotros forms take a written accent (hablábamos, comíamos, vivíamos) - mandatory.

The only three irregulars

In the entire imperfect tense, there are exactly three irregular verbs.

ser (to be):

ir (to go):

ver (to see) - slightly irregular, keeping the e of the infinitive:

That's the entire irregular set. Every other verb in Spanish - including stem-changers and famously irregular verbs like tener, hacer, decir, poder, querer - is regular in the imperfect.

When to use it

Three core uses.

1. Habitual past actions ("I used to", "I would"):

• De niño jugaba al fútbol. (As a child I used to play football.)
• Todos los domingos comíamos en casa de mi abuela. (Every Sunday we would eat at my grandmother's house.)
• Antes vivía en Madrid. (I used to live in Madrid.)

2. Ongoing past actions ("I was X-ing"):

• Mientras estudiaba, mi hermana cocinaba. (While I was studying, my sister was cooking.)
• Cuando me llamaste, dormía. (When you called me, I was sleeping.)

3. Background description / setting the scene:

• La casa era grande y tenía un jardín. (The house was big and had a garden.)
• Hacía frío y llovía. (It was cold and it was raining.)
• María tenía veinte años. (Maria was twenty years old.)

Time markers that trigger the imperfect

• siempre (always)
• todos los días / todas las semanas / todos los años (every day / week / year)
• normalmente (normally)
• a menudo (often)
• mientras (while)
• cuando era niño / pequeño / joven (when I was a child / small / young)
• de niño / de joven (as a child / as a young person)

If one of these markers shows up, you're almost certainly looking at imperfect, not preterite.

Worked examples

• Cuando era niño, vivía en Londres. (When I was a child, I lived in London.)
• Mi padre trabajaba en un banco. (My father worked at a bank.)
• Hablábamos español en casa. (We spoke Spanish at home.)
• Todos los veranos íbamos a la playa. (Every summer we used to go to the beach.)
• Mientras leía, sonó el teléfono. (While I was reading, the phone rang. - imperfect for the ongoing, preterite for the interrupting event)
• Eran las tres de la tarde. (It was three in the afternoon.)
• Veía a mi abuelo todos los fines de semana. (I used to see my grandfather every weekend.)

Common mistakes English speakers make

Forgetting the written accent on the nosotros forms: hablabamos is wrong, it's hablábamos. Treating "I was sleeping" as a single English form and translating it into Spanish with estaba durmiendo when dormía would do. Both are grammatical, but the simple imperfect is the unmarked default. And forgetting that ser, ir and ver are the only three irregulars - learners often try to invent irregular forms for tener (tenía is regular!) or hacer (hacía is regular).

See also

• The preterite page covers the other past tense.
• The preterite vs imperfect page covers the decision rules side by side.
• The intermediate Spanish grammar page covers the full past-tense system.