Imperfect (pretérito imperfecto): regular and irregular forms

De niño, jugaba en el parque todos los días.As a child, I used to play in the park every day.

The imperfect (pretérito imperfecto) is the tense for describing the past from the inside — what things were like, what usually happened, what was going on — rather than reporting a single completed event. It's one of the easiest Spanish tenses to conjugate: almost every verb is regular, and only three are irregular.

Quick shortcut: -ar verbs take -aba, -abas, -aba, -ábamos, -abais, -aban; -er and -ir verbs share -ía, -ías, -ía, -íamos, -íais, -ían. Only ser, ir and ver are irregular.

-ar verbs

For -ar verbs, remove -ar from the infinitive and add these endings to the stem:

Trabajaba en una tienda. (I used to work in a shop.) Mis padres viajaban mucho. (My parents used to travel a lot.) Notice that yo and usted/él/ella share the exact same form (hablaba) — context or a pronoun tells them apart.

-er and -ir verbs

These two groups share one set of endings:

Comíamos juntos los domingos. (We used to eat together on Sundays.) Vivía en Madrid. (I used to live/I was living in Madrid.) As with -ar verbs, yo and usted/él/ella share the same form (comía, vivía).

The three irregular verbs: ser, ir, ver

Only three Spanish verbs don't follow the regular pattern in the imperfect:

Era muy joven. (I was very young.) Íbamos a la playa cada verano. (We used to go to the beach every summer.) Veía la televisión por la noche. (I used to watch television at night.) Ver is only a little irregular: it keeps the e from its stem (ve-) instead of dropping it, which is why it's veía and not vía.

What the imperfect is used for

The imperfect describes the past from within — as ongoing or unfinished at the point being talked about — rather than reporting it as a completed whole. It covers:

• Habits and repeated actions: Todos los veranos íbamos a la playa. (Every summer we used to go to the beach.)
• Ongoing background situations: Llovía cuando salí. (It was raining when I left.)
• Descriptions in the past (people, places, feelings, age, time, weather): Ella era alta y tenía el pelo negro. (She was tall and had black hair.) Eran las tres de la tarde. (It was three in the afternoon.)

The imperfect doesn't tell you whether or when the situation ended — it just presents it as the backdrop. Contrasting it with the preterite, which reports a finished event, is its own topic once both tenses are familiar.

Common mistakes

• ❌ Cuando era niño, hablé tres idiomas. → ✅ Cuando era niño, hablaba tres idiomas. (to mean "used to speak," an ongoing childhood habit, use the imperfect; the preterite instead frames the period as a bounded whole, without necessarily meaning one single instance)
• ❌ Yo iba a la escuela y vi a mis amigos todos los días. → ✅ Yo iba a la escuela y veía a mis amigos todos los días. (here todos los días marks a habit, so the imperfect veía is needed, not the preterite vi)
• ❌ Ellos hablaba mucho. → ✅ Ellos hablaban mucho. (ellos takes -aban, not the yo/él form -aba)
• ❌ Nosotros víamos la tele. → ✅ Nosotros veíamos la tele. (ver keeps its e: veía, not vía)

Quick check

Here are five sentences to complete with the imperfect form of the verb in parentheses.

1. De niña, yo ___ (jugar) en el jardín.
2. Nosotros ___ (ser) muy buenos amigos.
3. Ella ___ (ir) al colegio en autobús.
4. Ellos ___ (vivir) cerca del mar.
5. Tú ___ (ver) muchas películas.

Key takeaways

• -ar verbs take -aba, -abas, -aba, -ábamos, -abais, -aban; -er/-ir verbs share -ía, -ías, -ía, -íamos, -íais, -ían.
• yo and usted/él/ella always share the same form — context or a pronoun tells them apart.
• Only ser (era...), ir (iba...) and ver (veía...) are irregular.
• The imperfect describes habits, ongoing situations and descriptions in the past — the backdrop, not a finished event.
• Knowing when to use the imperfect instead of the preterite is its own topic, once both tenses are familiar.