The Irregular Preterite: hacer, tener, estar

Spanish: El pretérito irregular: hacer, tener, estar

Level: A2 Elementary

Category: verbs

Explanation

The preterite (pretérito indefinido) is used to talk about completed actions in the past. However, some of the most common Spanish verbs are irregular in this tense. Three of the most important are "hacer" (to do/make), "tener" (to have), and "estar" (to be). These verbs do not follow the normal conjugation rules and you must memorize their forms. What is interesting is that these three verbs share the same set of endings: -e, -iste, -o, -imos, -isteis, -ieron. Notice that the first person (yo) ends in -e (without an accent) and the third person (él/ella) ends in -o (also without an accent). This is very different from regular verbs, where "yo" ends in -é and "él" ends in -ó with an accent. The irregular stems are: "hacer" → hic-, "tener" → tuv-, and "estar" → estuv-. A special feature of "hacer" is that in the third person singular the "c" changes to "z" to keep the soft sound: "él hizo" (not "hico"). These verbs appear constantly in everyday conversations: when you tell what you did yesterday, where you were, or what you had to do. That is why it is essential to master them from the A2 level.

Examples

• Ayer estuve en el café toda la tarde. - Yesterday I was at the café all afternoon.
• ¿Qué hiciste el fin de semana? - What did you do over the weekend?
• El recepcionista hizo la reserva sin problema. - The receptionist made the reservation without any problem.
• Tuve que esperar mucho tiempo en la recepción. - I had to wait a long time at the reception.
• Nosotros estuvimos en el mercado esta mañana. - We were at the market this morning.