Preterite for Dummies

Preterite is a word that we use to talk about an action or an event that happened in the past. It's like a special way of saying that something already happened and it's over. You can think of it as a time frame, just like when you tell a story and say, "Once upon a time." So, when we say "preterite," we mean talking about something that already happened, finished, and is not happening anymore.

Imagine that you have a magic time machine, and you decide to travel back in time to visit ancient Egypt. You see the pyramids being built, the Egyptians writing in hieroglyphics, and the hustle and bustle of daily life. Now, when you come back to the present and tell your friends about your adventure, you would use the preterite to describe what you saw and experienced. You would say things like, "I saw the amazing pyramids," or "I watched the Egyptians writing on papyrus." In these examples, the preterite is used because these actions happened in the past, and they are completed actions. They are not happening right now.

The preterite can also be used to talk about a specific time frame in the past. Let's say you had a picnic yesterday. You could say, "Yesterday, I had a delicious sandwich." In this sentence, the word "had" is in the preterite form because it is describing an action that happened in the past.

So, in simple terms, preterite is a way to talk about things that have already happened and are finished. It's like a time machine that takes us back to the past to describe what we saw or did. It helps us understand the specific time and completion of an action or event.