Lesson 48: Past Tense: The Line in the Past with 'er' and 'ir' verbs

In the previous two lessons we learned how to talk about the past with 'ar' verbs (including reflexive verbs. Now we'll see how this is done with 'er' and 'ir' verbs.

But to recap for 'ar' verbs our key sound was 'aba'

Spanish	English
Hablaba	I/he/she was speaking
Hablaban	They were speaking

For 'er' and 'ir' verbs we remove the 'er' or 'ir' and add 'ía'.

You'll probably have spotted this isn't the first time we've come across the 'ía' sound.

Spanish	English
Comería	I would eat
Comía	I was eating / I used to eat

In order not to confuse the two I remember the future one as "pusing the ia into the future by being longer.

Spanish	English
Lo venderia	I would sell it
Lo vendía	I was selling / I used to sell it

Vender as a reflexive verb

We covered earlier that 'vender' was "to sell" but we can also use it in the reflexive way to say "It sells iteself" which means "Its for sale".

Spanish	English
Se vende	Its for sale
Se vendía	It was for sale (it was selling itself)
Se vendería	It would be for sale (it would sell itself)

... and if you travel to any Spanish country you will see on some buildings the sign 'Se Vende' as a way of announcing a property is "for sale".

Romper recap

We've already looked at Romper both as a standard verb and as a reflexive one but not how it is used in the past tense.

Spanish	English
Lo rompía	I/he/she was breaking it
Se rompía	It was breaking (itself)
Se rompían	They were breaking (themselves)
Lo rompería	I would break it
Lo romperían	They would break it
Lo rompían	They were breaking it
Se rompe	It breaks (itself)
Se va a romper	It's going to break (itself)
Va a romperse	It's going to break (itself)

'Cómo' - "how"

Now one phrase you are probably going to use a lot when speaking is Spanish is "How do you say ....". Literally the Spanish way of saying this is "How does it say itself ....".

Spanish	English
Cómo se dice ....	How do you say ...

'Cómo dices ... ' exists but it is a specific question "How do you say it?" which you might ask when comparing accents or phrases between countries or regions.

'Quedar' as a verb of "what is left"

We've already covered 'Quedar as the verb "to remain":

Spanish	English
Me quedo	I stay / I remain (myself)
Nos quedamos	We stay / We remain (ourselves)
Se queda	He/she stays / He/she remains (himself/herself)
Se quedan	They stay (themselves)
Se quedaban	They were staying (themselves)
No se quedaban aquí	They weren't staying here
No me quedaba aquí	I wasn't staying here
Nos quedábamos aquí	We were staying here
No nos quedábamos aquí	We weren't staying here

but we can also use it to say how how much of something is left ... including nothing at all!

In English we might say "I have one left" and literally (in Spanglish) we would say "It remains to me one" or "To me, it remains one".

Spanish	English
Me queda uno	I have one left (to me it remains one)
Me quedan dos	I have two left (to me they remain two)
Le quedan dos	He has two left (to him they remain two)
No me quedan	I have none left (None (of them) to me remains)
No me queda	I have none left (None (of it) to me remains)
No nos quedaban	We didn't have any left (none remained to us)

Lesson 49: Past Tense (Line): Llamar, Tener, Ver, Ser and Ir