spanishlearners - Hi there feel free to join anyone!!!!

I can't think of any mnemonic for this, perhaps someone else knows.  I just went through and memorized them all.  It takes time, but it works!

Perhaps we can start with one....  Let's start with the past.  Say one thing you did, one thing that you think I did, and then one thing your sister, bro, or friend did.  Then we can all practice first, second, and third person (singular) simple past.  We can have a whole string of posts on those three and get those straight, and then move onto the next (the plural pasts).  After that, we can move onto the next.

But now, let's focus on this.

Yo compré unas manzanas deliciosas

I bought some delicious apples

¿Tú comiste algo interesante?

Did you eat anything interesting?

¡Mi hermano bebió mucha agua!

My brother drank too much water!

Ok, your turn!

1. escribí un poema del preterito i wrote a poem about the preterit
2. Auque pediste un mnemonico although you asked for a mnemonic
3. me quedó seca. it kept me dry

I was stuck on a long train journey the other day. the toilets had been vandalised and I needed something to take my mind off my swollen bladder so I set about trying to come up with a mnemonic for the preterit tense endings.
I came up against a lot of special cases, even without the irregular verbs its pretty scrappy and hence, difficult to condense to a simple algorithm
The 1st and 3rd persons seem to have been wilfully swapped. The simple past would be so much simpler if they had just moved the stress e.g. Háblo I speak, habló I spoke. Job done.
But then, if it was simple everyone would be doing it.

Anyway heres the fruit of my labours,it served its purpose and I made it to my destination without wetting myself
its probably easier just to memorise the endings but hopefully it will at least be entertaining.

To speak of actions now complete,
We need to use the preterit.

To conjugate it we append,
Unto a verb stem a new end,
Which tells who it was did the act,
and more, that we believe it fact.

so pick an action that’s “all done”,
then choose an end and tack it on,
and nail an accent at the joint ,
to move the stress onto this point.

é and í they are for me,
áste and íste are for you.
ó and ío for he and she,
so “it” is covered by them too.
as is “usted”, the formal you,
for use when more respect is due.

“We”, doesn’t need accénts because,
the vocal stress stays where it was.
emos is to imos made but,
amos stays as amos, staid.

ásteis and ísteis you use,
for second person plural “Yous”.
áron/íeron are for “They”,
and “y’all” but more polite this way.

The endings that begin with I
With ER, IR verbs should lie
The others fit to verbs that end
With AR like ”prestar”, to lend

oops, "it kept me dry" sounds better suited to the imperfect now i look at it again

Sorry for the long delay, thought that no one replyed but thesmithtopher you did in a timely matter so sorry for the delay and thank you for the response.

Now for the first hit at this preterito tense:

Yo ofrecí una ayuda por tu.

Tu ofreci una ayuda.

JP ofreció una ayuda.

Muchas gracias por tu ayuda.

donperigo man you are gifted at this. I wish I can do stuff like that when I am stuck if you know what I mean, I think I will be going through it daily to help me with the preterito verb, Muchas gracias a todo.

donperigo,

you got rhymes, baby!

é and í they are for me,
áste and íste are for you.
ó and ío for he and she,
so “it” is covered by them too.
as is “usted”, the formal you,
for use when more respect is due.

I am so totally memorizing that.  I can never remember those darn past tenses...

spanishlearner

Yo ofrecí una ayuda por tu.

I offered a help for you?

the preterit form is right "i offered".

i'm not sure you need the "una" , i think that your por should be a para and your tu should be a ti (although i may well be wrong)

i've never seen this explained but it seems to me that if "you" are doing the verb you're a tu and if you're on the recieving end, you are a ti.

Tu ofreci una ayuda.

you offered a help? 

whoosh,  swing and a miss :-)
this should be ofreciste. "you offered". i believe the te on the end of the iste aste endings signifies"you" just remember the song te for tu  (tea for two)

JP ofreció una ayuda.

whaddaguy. that jp is alway ready to help

Muchas gracias por tu ayuda.

el gusto es mio

jp, itsepainen,spanishlearner

gracias por sus palabras amable :-)

I've just realised that this isnt a group .its just a user started thread. i tried to post in the group but it wanted to see some ID first. :-(

That was an awesome poem!  I loved it.  I never thought of it like you did, it's cool to see another perspective on learning all these endings!

donperigo,

if you don't mind, i'd like to use your poem above to do some 1980s ol' school rap.  What do you think?

i think an intervention is called for. :-)

you are going to rap???  are you sure thats wise?these things seldom turn out well. what about your profesional gravitas. i still wake up screaming thinking about mr coopers prog rock band at the end of term concert.

actually, if youre out there mr c , it was a great success. you guys rocked.

JP Didí? hielo cubito? emay enyay emay?

will the team be joining in on the whoah whoah and beatbox noises?

it will certainly be viral.

¡Haz lo!

ha ha ha, we'll see.  I've asked Davidico to mix me some beats. 

Sincerely, MC Professional Gravitas.

Hmm, I guess I'm memorizing several endings but there are a lot of similarities that help me to remember the rest:

presente:

-ar verbs: e.g. amar: amo, amas, ama, amamos, amáis, aman

for -er verbs it's the same but with an e instead of an a in the ending: e.g. aprender: aprendo, aprendes, aprende, aprendemos, aprendéis, aprenden

for -ir verbs it's the same as for -er verbs but with an i for the 1st and 2nd person plurar (and only one i instead of two): e.g. vivir: vivo, vives, vive, vivimos, vivís, viven

presente for haber:

An important irregular verb is haber: he, has, ha, hemos, habéis, han. You will need this for the perfect, but I'm mentioning it because I use it to remember the endings of the future tense. The endings are those for -ar verbs for most persons, except for the 1st person singular, 1st person plural and 2nd person plural. I just memorize those. Once you know haber in the present, the future tense is a piece of cake:

futuro:

-ar, -er, -ir verbs have all the same endings added to the infinitive, e.g. amar: amaré, amarás, amará, amarémos, amaréis, amarán

Those are just the endings of haber in the present apart from an accent and a dropped "ab" in the 2nd person plural.

preterito perfecto simple/indefinido:

I'm memorizing the endings for -ar verbs: amé, amaste, amó, amamos, amasteis, amaron.

For -er and -ir verbs the first vowel of the endings is an i, which usually replaces the first vowel but is only inserted in the 3rd person singular. In the 3rd person plural there is an additional e: aprendí, aprendiste, aprendió, aprendimos, aprendisteis aprendieron.

Well, there are still many endings to learn (for -ar verbs and haber in the present and for -ar in the simple past). But for me it helped a lot to focus on these and a couple of rather simple rules to derive the rest. Of course, all this doesn't really help if you want to speak fluently. :)

Martin

MCPG

just heard your rappin on the 4th of july podcast

kudos. or should that be "word" or "solid" or somesuch :-)

"allwigadaweek" , outragious. and respect to the sound crew   davidico?

only thing is i had begun tinkering together a grammar rap for you and i was planning on using that whole wigadawigadawigada line so bang goes that idea. not to worry, hearing you in action has inspired me.

I would like to suggest something to help you remember the verb conjugations.  Barrons has a product called Mastering Spanish I and II.  Mastering Spanish is a repackaging of material that the U.S. Foreign Service developed many years ago.  It is not as much fun as newer produce like Pimslaur and Learning Spanish Like Crazy but it is definitely worth while. Most of the teaching is done through drills and I mean a lot of drills.  For example you hear Mari cantó ayer -  tu and you say cantaste ayer  you hear yo you say canté ayer and so on .  They really drill the stuff into your head.  Unfortunately I think that the regular preterit and imperfect tenses start in Mastering Spanish I and the irregular verbs are in level II, they cost about $50 each.  The good news is that they have been around so long that most libraries have them.  You can also down load some of the units of the original FSI course for free, it is in the public domain.  I include a link, but they seem to only have the first 9 units and do not have the text on the website  (Mastering Spanish I covers units 1-15, Mastering Spanish II cover units 16-30).  If you go to the page with the free down loads, please note that I am talking about the FSI Basic Spanish and not the Programmatic Course which is worth looking at since it is free.

Free FSI

Mastering Spanish I on Amazon.com

Mastering Spanish II on Amazon.com