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Grammar Summary

Spanish-2 Unidad 1 Etapa 1

Talk About the Past Using Regular Preterite Verbs

The preterite tense tells what happened or what you did.  it is used when the action described has already been completed.   Regular preterite verbs, like present indicative tense verbs, are formed by adding tense endings to the stem:

Be sure to include accent marks where necessary, as they are important to the meaning and to avoid confusion with other verb tense forms.!

Preterite Tense Verbs and Spelling Rules

The sounds "kay" and "gay" are spelled "que" and "gue" in Spanish.  Therefore when you spell the preterite yo form of -AR verbs (that have an "eh" sounding ending) you must watch your spelling.  Also verbs whose stem ends in the letter "z " change the "z" to a "c" before the letter "e":

Some verbs like this are: buscar, practicar, tocar, llegar, pagar, empezar, comenzar

Irregular Preterite Verbs ir, ser, hacer, dar, and ver

These irregular verbs do not follow the regular ending pattern.   Sometimes the stem of the verb changes a little bit, and sometimes it changes a lot.  There are several other irregular preterite verbs you will learn later that are like hacer, and they all have the same ending pattern as hacer.