 Home
Grammar index
Spanish dictionary
Basic Spanish phrases
Translate
|
|
When do you use the preterite and when do you use the perfect tense in Spanish?
The distinction between the perfect tense and the preterite in Spanish is largely similar to English. In other words:
- the Spanish preterite or simple past is largely used where English uses simple past forms such as took, gave;
- the Spanish perfect tense is largely used where English would also use a perfect tense (have taken, have given).
In both English and Spanish, there are some regional differences in the usage of the two tenses. But generally speaking, there are a few differences between English and Spanish use of the preterite and perfect tense that we can point out here.
Questioins involving yet/now translated as ya plus preterite
A common pattern in English (at least in British English) is to use a perfect tense in questions such as:
have you done your homework yet?
have you found your pen yet?
Suggest a change / Cambios sugeridosIn Spanish, a common pattern is to use the preterite with ya:
have you finished (now)?
¿ya hiciste tu tarea de español?
have you done your Spanish work yet?
¿ya encontraste tu pluma?
have you found your pen yet?
Suggest a change / Cambios sugeridosHowever, if ya is removed, it is often possible to use the perfect as in English, leading to alternatives such as:
or:
¿le has dado de comer?
have you fed her yet?
Suggest a change / Cambios sugeridosSentences with ya meaning already
A situation occurs with sentences such as the following, where English uses the perfect to express 'relevance to the present', whereas Spanish appears to favour the preterite, perhaps to express 'completion':
Preterite to signal the impossibility of an event with present relevance
In both English and Spanish perfect generally signals relevance to the present. For example, when you ask have you seen my keys?, the perfect tense emphasises the fact that the speaker needs the keys now, and also suggests that if the person hasn't found seen the keys yet, there's a chance that they still might in the future. Contrast this with a question such as did you see my keys when you were in the bathroom?, which suggests that the person won't have an opportunity to see the keys again now they've left the bathroom. In other words, the person asking the question views the opportunity to see the keys as a "completed event".
In English, there are cases where "present relevance" appears to override the notion of "completed event". For example, consider these sentences:
(b) we won't be able to go now: my brother hasn't arrived
(b') ??we won't be able to go now: my brother didn't arrive
Suggest a change / Cambios sugeridosIn (a), there's an implication that the speaker's brother may still arrive. But in (b) the implication is that the brother will never arrive. Despite this notion of "completed, past opportunity", the preterite as in (b') would be an odd choice (at least in British English). It appears that in English, the notion of "present relevance" prevails, and so the perfect is used.
Now, case (a) would generally be translated into Spanish using the perfect tense as you might expect:
let's wait a few more minutes: my brother hasn't arrived yet
Suggest a change / Cambios sugeridosBut in the case of (b), it would be usual in Spanish to use the preterite to signal the idea of "has not arrived and never will". That is, in Spanish, "present relevance" doesn't necessarily prevail as in English in this case:
we won't be able to go now: my brother hasn't arrived [lit: "...didn't arrive" ]
Suggest a change / Cambios sugeridos(Note that it is also possible in Spanish to say ...no ha llegado... in the second case.)
The "perfect of recency"?
Butt & Benjamin (2000:223) give some examples of what they term the "perfect of recency", in which the perfect is used to denote a recent event in Spanish where we might otherwise expect the preterite. For example:
I saw her a moment ago (their translation)
Suggest a change / Cambios sugeridosNow, it is true that in this "bare" form, the perfect would be unusual in English. However, if we add the word just, the perfect becomes acceptable:
In other cases, we could view the use of the perfect to denote "recency" as actually being the equivalent of adding just, just then etc in English:
The authors mention that this use of the perfect is less common in Latin America. In Mexico at least, the less acceptable examples appear to be specifically those without an explicit time reference such as hace un momento.
Español-Inglés home
Introduction to Spanish verbs
Spanish-English dictionary