“ Preterite” is simply the technical term for the “past” when it comes to verb tenses. You use the preterite tense all the time, even if you haven’t ever heard the term.
How is it formed in Spanish?
It’s pretty simple: You merely have to change the endings that you have been using in the present tense. There is a set of endings for -ar verbs, and a very similar set for -er verbs.
So what are these endings?
For -ar verbs, the endings in the preterite tense look like this:
- é -amos (no change here)
How does this look with a verb?
Let’s use the verb “bailar” for example:
bail é (I danced) bailamos (we danced)
bailaste (you danced)
bail ó (he/she danced) bailaron (they/you guys danced)
A note about the nosotros form
You may have noticed that the nosotros form is the same in both the present and the preterite tense. When reading and writing in this form, you have the use the context of the sentence (and/or entire paragraph) to distinguish the tense of the verb.