Conjugating Irregular Verbs in the Preterit

You'll find that the verbs that are irregular in the present tense in Spanish are very often irregular in the preterit, too. You'll also find some verbs that were regular or stem-changing in the present that are irregular in the preterit.

Irregular preterit verbs in Spanish have their own set of special endings, and those endings don't have accent marks. Let's look at the endings for irregular verbs like poner:

To make the preterit forms, add the endings from the chart (no accents!) to the stem indicated below.

*Irregular preterit stems that end in j drop the i from their ellos/ellas/ustedes endings: ellos dijeron, ustedes condujeron.

The verbs hacer, dar, ser, and ir are very irregular indeed, and you will have to memorize them. Look at the charts on the right for their preterit forms. You will probably notice that ser and ir share the same forms in the preterit tense. How will you know which verb is which in a sentence? Use context to guide you. Yo fui al restaurante must mean that I went to the restaurant. It is unlikely that it means I was the restaurant.