Preterite AR Verbs Spanish Verb Conjugation

Hola, and welcome to the Spanish “spine verb” section. The correct grammatical name for this verb tense is the “preterite” tense. If you are taking Spanish in school or with a tutor or teacher, they will usually call it the “preterite” tense. Because the word “preterite” is hard to relate to anything we have nicknamed this tense the “spine” tense after the spine in your back. First of all, your spine is in back of you, representing the past tense. If you run your hand left to right across your back, you will feel that there is a definite starting point and ending point to your spine. Like your spine, the spine tense represents a singular event in time that has a definite starting and ending point.

Here are a few examples of spine verbs.

I ate
She sat
They traveled
We walked

Just like with our comparison with the spine, with each of these verbs, the situation started, had a definite ending, and happened in the past. The next lesson will teach you to conjugate using the “spine” or “preterite” tense.

Ar Spine Spanish Verbs Explanation

Let’s learn how to conjugate “ar” spine verbs or otherwise called the “preterite” tense. We’ll use the verb “hablar” which means “to talk or speak”.

Now take a look at the Spine AR endings one more time and repeat them.

Now let’s try a few of these:

Let’s take one more look at the “ar” spine verb endings:

Now we’ll practice with a few different verbs. Are you ready?

How did you do? Before going on to the practice session, we need to learn a few new words and take a look at some usage situations.

First our new Vocabulary

Now we’ll take a brief look at a couple of usage situations. The verb “to enter” in Spanish is “entrar”. If you add a location after the word “entrar”, you need to put the word “en” afterwards. – For example, if you say I enter the house, in Spanish you would say “Entro en la casa” and if you say “I enter the car” you would say “Entro en el carro”.

Now, our final usage example: When you say “to try”, then add another verb, you have to add the word “de” between them. For example: “I tried to eat” – in past tense - would be “traté de comer”, the phrase “He tried to run would be “trató de correr”, and the phrase “We tried to speak” would be “tratamos de hablar” Remember, the AR verb “nosotros” form is the same in the present tense as well as the past tense. In the following Practice Session, you’ll have the chance to conjugate many ar spine verbs.

Spanish Practice Session – Spine Practice

Now, we’ll go ahead and begin our “ar” spine verb practice. As usual, you’ll read a phrase in English and you try to conjugate it into Spanish.

Repeat this lesson if you’re not comfortable with it yet. Otherwise go ahead and move on.