Learn Spanish (Latin America): Cuando caminábamos, veíamos muchas palomas migratorias. - When we walked, we used to see many migratory pigeons.

Cuando caminábamos, veíamos muchas palomas migratorias.

When we walked, we used to see many migratory pigeons.

Breakdown of Cuando caminábamos, veíamos muchas palomas migratorias.

mucho

many / a lot

ver

to see / to look / appear

Questions & Answers about Cuando caminábamos, veíamos muchas palomas migratorias.

Why does this sentence use caminábamos and veíamos instead of the preterite forms like caminamos and vimos?

In this context, the imperfect tense is used to describe habitual or repeated actions in the past. It translates best to "used to walk" and "used to see" (or "would walk" and "would see"). If you used the preterite, it would mean a specific, one-time event: "When we walked (that one time), we saw..."

Could cuando caminábamos also translate to "when we were walking"?

Yes! The imperfect can describe an ongoing background action. If the sentence ended with a sudden preterite verb, like vimos una paloma (we saw a pigeon), it would mean "when we were walking, we saw a pigeon." Because both verbs here are in the imperfect, it establishes a routine, leaning closer to "whenever we used to walk."

Why do both caminábamos and veíamos have written accent marks?

For caminábamos, all "nosotros" forms of the regular -ar imperfect tense require an accent on the "a" to keep the spoken stress on the correct syllable. For veíamos, the accent on the "i" breaks the vowel blend (diphthong), ensuring the "i" and "a" are pronounced clearly as two separate syllables.

Why does the adjective migratorias come after the noun, while muchas comes before it?