Pretérito: verbos regulares en -er e -ir

The good news first: in the preterite, regular -er and -ir verbs share one single set of endings. You learn one paradigm and it covers both conjugation classes — comer, vivir, beber, escribir, aprender, recibir, dozens more. This is unusual: in the present indicative -er and -ir diverge in the nosotros and vosotros forms (comemos / coméis vs vivimos / vivís). In the preterite they line up perfectly.

This page covers the endings, the obligatory accents, the longest vosotros form in the whole system, and how to tell comimos (preterite) from comemos (present) without help.

The shared endings

Drop the -er or -ir and add the preterite endings below — the same set for both classes.

Once you have comí and comieron, you already have viví and vivieron. The endings are interchangeable across the two classes.

The obligatory accents

Two forms carry written accents: the yo form (-í) and the él/ella/usted form (-ió). As with -ar verbs, these accents are not decorative — they mark the stress and distinguish the form from look-alikes.

• comió (he/she ate, preterite) vs como (I eat, present)
• viví (I lived, preterite) vs vivo (I live, present)

The stress falls on the final vowel in the preterite (co-MIÓ, vi-VÍ) and the accent makes that explicit. Without it, vivi would be unreadable and vivio would either confuse the reader or be parsed as a misspelling.

The peninsular vosotros: -isteis (the longest ending)

Spain's -isteis ending (comisteis, vivisteis, escribisteis, recibisteis) is the longest vosotros ending of any tense in any verb class. It is also one of the most distinctively peninsular forms — Latin America replaces it with ustedes comieron and never uses -isteis at all.

Two common slip-ups, both committed by native speakers in casual writing:

• *comistes — dropping the -i- by analogy with the tú form comiste. Incorrect.
• *comísteis — adding a stray accent. The vosotros ending takes no accent: comisteis, not comísteis.

The correct form is comisteis — three syllables (co-MIS-teis), accent-free, with -i- between -st- and -eis.

Telling preterite from present

Where -er and -ir verbs differ from -ar verbs in this respect: their nosotros form is not always ambiguous.

• -er verbs: comemos (present) vs comimos (preterite). Distinct. No ambiguity.
• -ir verbs: vivimos (present) vs vivimos (preterite). Identical. Context-dependent — just like hablamos.

So with -er verbs you can tell tense from the form alone; with -ir verbs you cannot. A time marker resolves the -ir ambiguity.

Both sentences use vivimos — the time expressions (desde hace, antes de volver) and the bounded vs unbounded framing tell you which tense is meant. With -er verbs the same pair would be unambiguous: Comemos a las dos (present) vs Comimos a las dos (preterite).

Three more model verbs

Common regular -er and -ir verbs

These follow the regular pattern exactly:

-er verbs:

• comer — to eat
• beber — to drink
• correr — to run
• aprender — to learn
• comprender — to understand
• vender — to sell
• temer — to fear

-ir verbs:

• vivir — to live
• escribir — to write
• recibir — to receive
• subir — to go up, to bring up
• decidir — to decide
• descubrir — to discover
• insistir — to insist

Sub-patterns to flag — but not cover here

Some verbs in -ir that look regular on paper actually have a small irregularity in the third-person forms (él and ellos). The pattern is a stem-vowel change that surfaces only there:

• pedir → pidió, pidieron (stem e → i in 3rd person)
• dormir → durmió, durmieron (stem o → u in 3rd person)
• sentir → sintió, sintieron
• leer → leyó, leyeron (the unstressed i between vowels becomes y)

The other four persons (yo, tú, nosotros, vosotros) are perfectly regular: pedí, pediste, pedimos, pedisteis. These wrinkles live on their own pages: Cambio vocálico e>i en el pretérito, Cambio vocálico o>u en el pretérito, and the -y- spelling on Otros cambios ortográficos.

The today / not-today rule (peninsular Spanish)

The same rule that governs -ar preterite use applies here. In Spain, the preterite is for events not happening today — events whose time frame has closed (yesterday, last week, last year, in 1995). Events located in the current frame (today, this morning, this week, this month, this year) take the pretérito perfecto instead.

• Hoy he comido tarde. — I ate late today. (peninsular: he comido, not comí)
• Ayer comí muy bien. — I ate very well yesterday. (preterite — yesterday is closed)
• Esta semana hemos recibido tres pedidos. — We've received three orders this week.
• La semana pasada recibimos un pedido enorme. — Last week we received a huge order.

This is the single biggest divergence between Spain and Latin America. Hoy comí tarde is the natural Mexican form; it sounds slightly distant or narrative in Madrid. See Pretérito vs pretérito perfecto for the full rules.

What the preterite does

The same role as the -ar preterite: it presents an event as completed and bounded, with start and end implied. It is also the tense of sequential events in a story — the moves that advance the plot.

Each verb is a discrete event in sequence. The imperfect would describe the surrounding state (hacía frío, no había mucha gente en el vagón, estaba muy cansada) — the backdrop against which the preterite events take place.

Common mistakes

Key takeaways

• -er and -ir verbs share one preterite paradigm: -í, -iste, -ió, -imos, -isteis, -ieron. Once you know it for comer, you know it for vivir.
• The yo (-í) and él (-ió) forms carry obligatory accents.
• The peninsular vosotros form is -isteis — the longest vosotros ending in the language. Beware the slip -istes and the stray accent in *comísteis.
• For -er verbs the nosotros preterite (comimos) is distinct from the present (comemos); for -ir verbs it is identical (vivimos) and context disambiguates.
• A few -ir verbs add stem changes (pidió, durmió) or -y- (leyó) in the third-person forms only. Those patterns are covered on their own pages.
• In Spain, use this preterite for events not happening today; today's events take the pretérito perfecto (he comido, hemos vivido). See Pretérito vs pretérito perfecto.