Whether you're talking about the past, present, or future, you need tense. Luckily, English and Spanish are very similar in verb tenses, but there are some differences to look out for…
Stuck in the past
One difference between English and Spanish is that Spanish has two different types of past tense: preterite and imperfect.
As a native speaker of Spanish, you're used to separating past events into two categories: events that had a concrete start and end (preterite), and events that were ongoing (imperfect).
In case you're not familiar with that, here are some examples:
- Creía que no te gustara. (imperfect)
- Ya terminé mi tarea. (preterite)
English lumps these types of events into one category: the past tense.
- I thought you didn't like me.
- I already finished my homework.
English actually doesn't really distinguish between habitual and non-habitual events in the past. If you want to express that an event happened for an extended period of time in the past, you could use any of the following constructions:
- My dog barked a lot when he was a puppy.
- My dog used to bark a lot when he was a puppy.
- My dog would bark a lot as a puppy.
When English speakers learn Spanish, they learn that using "would + verb" is the same as the past imperfect in Spanish. Really, that's only one (pretty uncommon) way to express the past imperfect in English, and it only works in certain situations—usually when the speaker is reminiscing. Here are a few:
- I'd love waking up to the smell of pancakes.
- I loved waking up to the smell of pancakes.
- I'd always skip to the comic strips in the newspaper.
- I used to always skip to the comic strips in the newspaper.
But there are plenty of situations where you'd use the past imperfect in Spanish, but not "would + verb" in English. To be safe, we recommend just sticking to the past tense. That "would + verb" construction belongs to a higher register anyway.
Now Presenting: The Present
This is easy. The present tense is pretty much the same in English and Spanish:
- I like to drink tea at lunch. (simple present)
- Me gusta tomar té con almuerzo. (simple present)
- I'm studying at the park. (present progressive)
- Estoy estudiando en el parque. (present progressive)
ELLs don't have a considerable amount of trouble when learning verb tenses in English, and that's because Spanish has way more verb conjugations than English. Native speakers of Spanish can learn these English conjugations without having to learn brand-new concepts.
English uses the past and present tenses for pretty much everything. You might find yourself wanting to conjugate a verb a certain way, but don't have a way to do it. It's probably the present tense, though. Check out our section on the Subjunctive to learn how to express all the different conjugations you're used to using in Spanish.
Wave of the Future
Spanish inflects for future tense like this:
- Vamos a jugar fútbol mañana.
- Jugaremos fútbol mañana.
English inflects for the future in pretty much the same way:
- We are going to play soccer tomorrow.
- We will play soccer tomorrow.
But! English has another way of expressing things in the future:
- We are playing soccer tomorrow.
This sentence might seem a little strange for Spanish speakers since the verbs seem to be in the present (to be more specific, in the present progressive).
If it weren't for the word "tomorrow," we wouldn't know that it's talking about the future. This construction of the future is used all the time in English:
- We're studying for the test later.
- We're grabbing lunch after class.
- She's driving us to the football game on Friday.
For now, don't worry about it. Just know that it exists. You'll pick it up in no time.