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Castilian Spanish Verbs:
Lesson 4: The imperfect

The imperfect is formed in two steps. First, form an imperfect stem:
With a-verbs, replace the stem vowel a with aba.
With e-verbs, replace the stem vowel e with ía.

Add the following endings to the imperfect stem:

'I' 'you (singular)' 'He/she/it' 'We' 'You (plural)' 'They'
(none) -s (none) -mos -is -n

This gives us the following forms. Their meaning is an ongoing action in the past, like 'I was doing':

Person a-verb:
cantar 'to sing'
root cant-
imperfect stem cant-aba-		 e-verb:
beber 'to drink'
root beb-
imperfect stem beb-ía-
'I' cantaba 'I was singing' bebía 'I was drinking'
'You (singular)' cantabas 'you were singing' bebías 'you were drinking'
'He/she/it' cantaba 'he/she/it was singing' bebía 'he/she/it was drinking'
'We' cantábamos 'we were singing' bebíamos 'we were drinking'
'You (plural)' cantabais 'you were singing' bebíais 'you were drinking'
'They' cantaban 'they were singing' bebían 'they were drinking'

All these forms are accented on one vowel before that to which the ending is attached (the ab or the í).

Note how similar these endings are to the endings of the present:

Person 'I' 'you (singular)' 'He/she/it' 'We' 'You (plural)' 'They'
Endings of present (added to root form) -o -s (none) -mos -is -n
Endings of imperfect (added to imperfect stem) (none) -s (none) -mos -is -n


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