The imperfecto de indicativo is Spanish's second past tense — the one for habits, ongoing actions, descriptions, and the background of past stories. Where the pretérito indefinido gives you discrete events (hablé, llegué, terminé), the imperfect gives you the texture around them (hablaba, llegaba, terminaba). For regular -ar verbs the endings form one of the cleanest, most predictable patterns in the language: six forms with no irregularities and only one tiny but obligatory accent. This page covers all six, including the peninsular vosotros.
The endings
Drop the -ar of the infinitive and add the personal endings below.
| Subject | Ending | hablar → |
|---|---|---|
| yo | -aba | hablaba |
| tú | -abas | hablabas |
| él / ella / usted | -aba | hablaba |
| nosotros / nosotras | -ábamos | hablábamos |
| vosotros / vosotras | -abais | hablabais |
| ellos / ellas / ustedes | -aban | hablaban |
Three things to internalize from this table:
- The only accent in the whole paradigm sits on -ábamos. It is obligatory.
- The peninsular vosotros form hablabais takes no accent. It is stressed on the -ba- (paroxytone), and Spanish spelling rules say no accent is needed there.
- Yo and él/ella/usted are identical (hablaba). Context — usually a subject pronoun or the surrounding sentence — disambiguates. The two never look or sound different in any -ar verb in the imperfect.
Cuando vivía en Granada, hablaba con mi casera todos los días en la escalera.
When I lived in Granada, I used to talk to my landlady every day on the stairs.
Mis padres trabajaban en una fábrica de muebles a las afueras del pueblo.
My parents used to work in a furniture factory on the outskirts of the village.
Why nosotros gets the accent
This is a question worth understanding rather than memorizing. Spanish stress rules are mechanical: a word ending in a vowel, n, or s is stressed on the second-to-last syllable by default. Words that break that default need a written accent to flag the irregular stress.
- Ha-bla-ba — three syllables, ends in vowel, default stress on -bla- (second-to-last). No accent needed.
- Ha-bla-bas — same shape, default stress on -bla-. No accent needed.
- Ha-blá-ba-mos — four syllables, default would be -ba- (second-to-last), but the actual stress is on -blá- (third-to-last). This is irregular, so the accent is obligatory.
- Ha-bla-bais — three syllables (the -ais is a single diphthong syllable), ends in s, default stress on -bla-. That matches the actual stress, so no accent.
The rule generalizes: across the entire Spanish verb system, the nosotros form of the imperfect of -ar verbs is always stressed on the antepenultimate syllable and always requires the accent (estábamos, trabajábamos, comprábamos). Drop it and the word is misspelt.
The vosotros form: -abais, no accent
Peninsular Spanish keeps vosotros alive in every tense, and the imperfect is one of the contexts where it's especially common — habit talk, reminiscence, and storytelling all reach for vosotros constantly when speaking to a group of friends or family members.
The form is -abais (hablabais, trabajabais, comprabais, jugabais). Two trap points:
- No accent. Despite ending in -ais, the stress is on -ba- (paroxytone), so the default rule covers it and no accent is needed. Compare -er/-ir: those forms (comíais, vivíais) DO carry an accent on the -í- because the stress falls there. Mixing them up is one of the most frequent learner errors at A2.
- Hablabais is pronounced as three syllables: ha-bla-bais. The -ai- is a diphthong, not two separate vowels.
¿De qué hablabais cuando entré? Os habéis callado de repente.
What were you (guys) talking about when I came in? You all suddenly went quiet.
Vosotros estudiabais juntos en la biblioteca, ¿no? Me suena haberos visto allí.
You used to study together at the library, right? I have a vague memory of seeing you there.
Three model verbs side by side
| Subject | trabajar | estudiar | jugar |
|---|---|---|---|
| yo | trabajaba | estudiaba | jugaba |
| tú | trabajabas | estudiabas | jugabas |
| él / ella / usted | trabajaba | estudiaba | jugaba |
| nosotros / nosotras | trabajábamos | estudiábamos | jugábamos |
| vosotros / vosotras | trabajabais | estudiabais | jugabais |
| ellos / ellas / ustedes | trabajaban | estudiaban | jugaban |
Note that jugar — which has a u→ue stem change in the present (juego, juegas, juega) — is perfectly regular in the imperfect. The stem change vanishes; the imperfect endings attach to the plain stem jug-. The same is true for every -ar stem-changer (pensar → pensaba, contar → contaba, empezar → empezaba). This is a feature of the imperfect across the entire verb system: stem changes do not appear. Once you know the -aba endings, you can conjugate every regular -ar verb in the language without exception.
Cuando éramos pequeños, jugábamos al fútbol en la plaza hasta que se iba la luz.
When we were little, we used to play football in the square until the streetlights came on.
Mi padre siempre empezaba el día con un café solo y un trozo de pan con tomate.
My father always started the day with a black coffee and a piece of bread with tomato.
What this tense actually means
The imperfect is the tense for three closely related meanings:
1. Habitual past — "used to" / "would"
Repeated, routine actions in the past, with no particular start or end.
De pequeña, mi abuela me cuidaba todas las tardes después del colegio.
As a little girl, my grandmother used to look after me every afternoon after school.
Los sábados desayunábamos churros con chocolate en la cafetería de la esquina.
On Saturdays we'd have churros and hot chocolate at the corner café.
This use lines up almost exactly with English "used to" and the conditional-looking "would" of habit (we would always go…). If your English sentence works with either of those, the Spanish almost certainly wants the imperfect.
2. Ongoing action in the past — "was ___ing"
What was happening at a particular moment, often when something else interrupted it.
Yo cocinaba la cena cuando sonó el telefonillo.
I was cooking dinner when the buzzer rang.
Mientras tú estudiabas, yo escuchaba música con auriculares para no molestarte.
While you were studying, I'd listen to music with headphones so as not to disturb you.
Note that English "was cooking" and Spanish cocinaba aren't grammatical mirrors — Spanish doesn't need the auxiliary estar to mark progressive aspect in the past (though estaba cocinando is also possible and slightly emphasizes the in-progress nature).
3. Description and background
Setting the scene in a past story: appearance, weather, age, mental and physical states, time of day.
La casa estaba en lo alto de la colina y desde el balcón se veía todo el pueblo.
The house stood at the top of the hill and from the balcony you could see the whole village.
Llevaba un vestido rojo y zapatillas de deporte — una combinación rarísima, pero le quedaba bien.
She was wearing a red dress and trainers — a strange combination, but it suited her.
The imperfect doesn't ask what happened? — it asks what was the situation?
Source-language note for English speakers
English handles past habit with three overlapping resources: used to (explicit habit), would (habit or conditional), and the plain past (ambiguous between habit and event). Spanish collapses all three into a single tense, the imperfect. Hablaba todos los días con mi abuela can be translated as I used to talk to my grandmother every day, I would talk to my grandmother every day, or simply I talked to my grandmother every day — and English readers have to use the surrounding context to figure out which reading is intended. Spanish doesn't ask its readers to do that work: the imperfect itself signals habit, ongoingness, or background.
The flip side: English speakers learning Spanish often under-use the imperfect, defaulting to preterite for any past event because that's the easier-feeling translation. Resist this. Every time you write fue / hablé / trabajé for something that was actually habitual or descriptive, you're flattening the texture of your Spanish. The two tenses earn their keep precisely because they carry different meanings.
A note on jugar (and other -ar verbs that look slippery)
Because jugar has a u→ue stem change in the present, learners sometimes carry that change into the imperfect by reflex. They write juegaba or juegabamos. Both are wrong. The imperfect uses the plain stem jug-: jugaba, jugabas, jugaba, jugábamos, jugabais, jugaban. The same goes for every -ar stem-changer:
- pensar (e→ie) → pensaba, pensábamos, never piensaba
- contar (o→ue) → contaba, contábamos, never cuentaba
- empezar (e→ie) → empezaba, empezábamos, never empiezaba
- acordarse (o→ue) → me acordaba, nos acordábamos, never me acuerdaba
The imperfect simply doesn't allow stem changes. Treat the verb as if its stem were perfectly plain.
Cuando estudiaba en la universidad, pensaba que la vida ya era seria — qué inocente.
When I was at university, I thought life was already serious — how naive of me.
Common mistakes
❌ Cuando estaba en Madrid, hablába con mi compañera de piso cada noche.
Wrong: hablaba takes NO accent (paroxytone, default stress). Only -ábamos carries the accent in the -ar imperfect.
✅ Cuando estaba en Madrid, hablaba con mi compañera de piso cada noche.
Correct: hablaba without accent.
❌ De pequeños jugabamos en la plaza todas las tardes.
Wrong: jugábamos requires the accent on -á-.
✅ De pequeños jugábamos en la plaza todas las tardes.
Correct: jugábamos with obligatory accent on the antepenultimate syllable.
❌ ¿De qué hablábais en la cocina?
Wrong: vosotros -abais carries NO accent. Don't transfer the nosotros accent here.
✅ ¿De qué hablabais en la cocina?
Correct: hablabais without accent (paroxytone, default stress).
❌ Antes me acuerdaba de todos los cumpleaños.
Wrong: stem changes don't appear in the imperfect — use the plain stem.
✅ Antes me acordaba de todos los cumpleaños.
Correct: acordaba with no o→ue change.
❌ Ayer trabajaba ocho horas y terminaba agotada.
Wrong: a bounded, completed workday calls for the preterite, not the imperfect.
✅ Ayer trabajé ocho horas y terminé agotada.
Correct: preterite for a closed, completed event.
Key takeaways
- Regular -ar imperfect endings: -aba, -abas, -aba, -ábamos, -abais, -aban.
- The only obligatory accent is on -ábamos. The vosotros form -abais takes no accent (paroxytone).
- Yo and él/ella are identical (hablaba); context disambiguates.
- Stem changes (jugar, pensar, contar, empezar) vanish in the imperfect — always use the plain stem.
- Use the imperfect for habits (todos los días hablaba…), ongoing actions (cocinaba cuando llamaste), and descriptions (la casa era grande). Reserve the preterite for bounded, completed events.
- English speakers tend to under-use the imperfect because English collapses habit, progressive, and event into one past. In Spanish, the imperfect is doing real semantic work — don't translate it away.
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- Imperfecto para acciones habitualesA2 — The imperfect's bread-and-butter use: things you used to do in the past, things you would do on a regular basis, patterns and routines that repeated themselves. If English would say 'used to' or habitual 'would', Spanish uses the imperfect.
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