The Past comes back to haunt us

We've just started telling stories in class.
Profesora Ximena has been giving us examples of legends from Mexico, then encouraging us to retell them in our own words, and also to provide examples of fables or tales from our own countries (I did a reasonable rendition of 'the sword in the stone')

Now you can practice verb conjugations and do exercises to prove that you know when to use each of the two past tenses, but it's not until you start telling a tale, from scratch, in your own words, that you realise that the only way to master them is to practice using them in conversation.

But, until you get the chance to have a face to face with a real-life Spanish speaker (don't forget, there are plenty of them waiting in SecondLife, and at www.verbling.com) here's a brief reminder of some of the principle differences between the preterite and the imperfect.

Use the imperfect for:
Habitual actions in the past - 'I used to see him every day' - 'Lo veía todos los días'
Physical, mental or emotional states - 'she was sad and she was hungry' - 'estaba triste y tenía hambre'
Things which already existed - 'there was a car park' - 'había un aparcamiento'  (estacionamiento in South America)
Actions in progress - 'I was brushing my teeth' - 'me cepillaba los dientes'
Reported speech - 'she told me she was going to the shops' - 'me dijo que ella iba a las tiendas'
Useful hint here: - memorise 'IBA A' - it means 'WAS GOING' and can be used with almost any verb to express 'was going  . . . to do . . whatever'

There are several hints which you might hear, to help you remember general cases for the imperfect.
Anyone who has completed the Michel Thomas course will remember his references to WAS-ING and WERE-ING, i.e if you WERE do-ING something (action in progress) then you'd use the imperfect.
Another trick is to remember imperfect as 'incomplete', this follows the same logic - if you WERE doing something, then you hadn't completed it, so imperfect again.
Final trick - if the question is 'what happened?',  the answer is in the preterite. If the question is 'what was happening?', the answer is in the imperfect.

A few cases to look out for here. The first two involve mixing the imperfect and preterite in the same sentence but, thankfully, they're fairly hard-and-fast rules so are easy to apply, once you've mastered them.

1) Reported speech.
The part of the speech you are reporting is always in the imperfect.
So - 'he told us that the Pharaohs built the pyramids' - ' nos contó que los Pharaohs construían las pyramides'
(I don't want to complicate things too much here, but it would also be possible to say 'he used to say that the Pharaohs built the pyramids'  - where 'used to say' is an habitual action, so you would use the imperfect for both that, AND the reported speech - 'nos decía que los Pharaohs construían las pyramides')
2)Where one action interrupts another.
The action which you WERE do-ING is in the imperfect, interrupted by another in the preterite.
'I was reading, when you called me' - 'yo leía cuando me llamaste'

Finally a couple of little oddities. One will be familiar to Michel Thomas devotees - the use of 'saber' (to know). Almost every time you use 'saber' in the past, it will be as 'sabía', on the basis that you didn't just know it for a moment, you still know it, so the action is incomplete. The preterite 'supe', 'supe' etc, when it is used, is taken to mean 'I found out'

The second is one I was corrected over in class - I wanted to say that Merlin has taken the young Arthur, as a baby, and used 'Merlin lo hubo llevado', assuming that it was a completed action and should therefore be in the preterite.
However, when you think about it 'Merlin lo llevó' is a completed action (Merlin took him) but having taken him, you could argue that he was then in a continuous state of 'having taken him' and continuous or ongoing actions require . . the imperfect. So that's one to remember, along with 'iba a' - 'Had done something' = 'había hecho algo'

Apparently 'hubo' is used, but mainly to refer to events - for instance 'hubo una fiesta' - 'there was a party'

Well, I've rambled on for long enough, and reckon you can probably figure out for yourselves what's left to use the preterite for, and I still have some homework to do so it's ¡Hasta la proxima!, and see you next time.