Learn Spanish (Latin America): En la adolescencia, yo vivía en la ciudad. - In adolescence, I used to live in the city.

Vivía is in the imperfect tense, which is used to describe ongoing past situations, habits, or states, like saying "I used to live" or "I was living". If you used the preterite tense viví, it would sound like a single completed event, like "I lived there (and then it ended)."

What is the pattern for making the imperfect tense for a verb like vivir?

For regular -er and -ir verbs, you drop the ending and add -ía, -ías, -ía, -íamos, or -ían. For vivir, the yo form is vivía. Notice that every single one of these endings has an accent mark on the í!

Since Spanish usually drops words like "I" (yo), why is yo included before vivía?

In the imperfect tense, the yo (I) form and the él/ella/usted (he/she/you formal) form are exactly the same: vivía. Including yo here makes it perfectly clear that you are talking about yourself, not someone else.

Why is there a la in En la adolescencia when the English translation just says "In adolescence"?