Up to this point we have learned to talk of things in the present, and some expressions in the future with the verb ir a. In this lesson we will begin learning how to say things in the past so we can talk about things that we did yesterday, last week, or last year. Obviously, this is called the past tense.

In Spanish there are two different ways to say things in the past - one is used when talking of specific times in the past and is called the preterite tense, which we will talk about in this lesson. The other is called the imperfect past tense and is used when telling about non-specific times in the past. We´ll talk more about it in another lesson.

The preterite tense is very similar to our past tense in English. Let´s see how this works in English. Take the verb to buy. To put it in the past tense we say bought like I bought the book yesterday.

As with the present tense, the different verbs ar, er, and ir, have different endings. In this lesson we will talk about the ar verbs. Let´s go over the endings for the past tense:

Notice that the nosotros form is the same as the nosotros form in the present tense. The way we tell the difference is by the context of the sentence. If it is talking about something we did in the past then it is the past tense form.

Let´s look at the verb comprar conjugated in the past tense:

Singular	Plural
yo compré (I bought)	nosotros compramos (we bought)
tú compraste (you bought)
usted compró (you bought) ella compró (she bought) él compró (he bought) Pablo compró (Paul bought)	ustedes compraron (you all bought) ellas compraron (they bought) ellos compraron (they bought) María y Pablo compraron (Mary & Paul bought)

One thing we have mentioned that we need to remember is that this tense is used for talking about specific times in the past - like last night, yesterday, last week, etc.

Here are some examples:

Yo tomé un examen la semana pasada
I took a test last week

Me levanté tarde ayer
I got up late yesterday.

Notice that reflexive verbs will work just as we learned in the previous lesson. In the practice exercises you will be asked to provide the correct forms of ar verbs in the past tense.