Gender and two past tenses: what English doesn't give you

Two things in Spanish catch English speakers off guard early on. Every noun has a grammatical gender, even a table or an idea. And the past has two simple tenses where English gets by with one: escribí and escribía can both be "I wrote". English has nothing built in for either, so you build both from scratch. They are smaller systems than they look, and in the second one English helps more than you'd expect.

Gender: every noun is el or la

In Spanish every noun is masculine or feminine. It has nothing to do with meaning: a table is no more female than a book is male. Gender is a label that comes with the word, and the words around it have to match.

The basic rule covers most nouns. Words ending in -o are usually masculine and take el; words ending in -a are usually feminine and take la:

Two more endings are worth knowing: -ción and -dad are feminine (la canción "the song", la ciudad "the city"). Nouns ending in -e or a consonant give no reliable sign: el coche ("the car"; el carro or el auto in much of Latin America), la noche ("the night"), el hotel, la flor ("the flower").

Gender doesn't stay on the noun. The article and every adjective agree with it, in gender and in number:

• el coche rojo ["the car red"], los coches rojos ["the cars reds"];
• la casa roja ["the house red"], las casas rojas ["the houses reds"].

English has no plural adjectives, so rojos feels like saying "reds". That is exactly what Spanish does.

Since English gives you no clue here, don't guess. Learn every noun with its article, not casa but la casa, and the gender comes along for free. That is how the course's first point on articles, gender and number teaches them. Then pick up the common exceptions as they come:

• masculine though they end in -a: el día ("the day"), el problema, el mapa, el idioma ("the language"), el sofá;
• feminine though they end in -o: la mano ("the hand"), la foto, la moto.

Words for people usually change with the person: el médico / la médica ("the doctor"), el niño / la niña ("the child"). Some only change the article: el estudiante, la estudiante. But a label stays a label: la persona is feminine even when the person is a man.

Two past tenses where English has one

"I played football" can mean one match yesterday or a habit that lasted years. Spanish has to choose:

• the pretérito indefinido (also called the preterite) for a finished event: jugué, "I played", once, and it's done;
• the imperfecto for background, habits and description: jugaba, "I was playing / I used to play".

Put the second row together and you have the way Spanish tells every story: Leía cuando sonó el teléfono ["(I) was-reading when rang the phone"]. The scene goes in the imperfecto, the thing that happened goes in the indefinido.

Where English helps

English marks part of this difference, just not everywhere. Three of its forms point straight at the imperfecto:

• "was / were + -ing": Llovía ["(It) was-raining"];
• "used to": Vivíamos en el centro ["(We) used-to-live in the centre"];
• the habitual "would": Los domingos comíamos con mis abuelos ["The Sundays (we) would-eat with my grandparents" (= on Sundays)].

If you'd naturally say it with one of these in English, it is almost always the imperfecto in Spanish.

Where English misleads

The trouble is the plain English past (was, had, knew, played), which covers both tenses. Here you have to ask what the verb is doing in the sentence:

• La casa era enorme ["The house was enormous"] describes; La fiesta fue genial ["The party was great"] sums up an event that is over.
• Tenía un perro ["(I) had a dog" — for some time]; Tuve un accidente ["(I) had an accident" — it happened].

A few verbs even need a different English verb in the indefinido: sabía "I knew" but supe "I found out"; conocía a Ana "I knew Ana" but conocí a Ana ["(I) got-to-know Ana" (= I met Ana)].

So a quick test for any verb in a story: does it move the story on, so you could ask "and then what?" Indefinido. Does it paint the scene, or describe how things were or what used to happen? Imperfecto.

Era sábado. Llovía y yo estaba en casa. De repente sonó el teléfono. Contesté y era Marta. ["(It) was Saturday. (It) was-raining and I was at home. Suddenly rang the phone. (I) answered and (it) was Marta."]

Only sonó and contesté move the story forward. Everything else is the scene.

Spanish also has a third past, he jugado ("I have played"). In Spain it covers what happened today; most of Latin America uses the indefinido there too. That is a separate story, and it doesn't change the choice above.

What to do with this

A rule gives you a first instinct; the choice becomes automatic only when you build past sentences yourself. In the course the two tenses first meet in chapter A2-04, Mi historia: lo que pasó y cómo era ["My story: what happened and how (it) was"], on the A2 page, where the imperfecto for description and habits is set against the indefinido. They come back in B1 as the two tenses inside a real story. A2 is where they first meet, not where you finish with them: understanding the rule one evening and choosing the right form mid-conversation are a long way apart.

When you do choose wrong, the slip comes back to you as a review card. The example in Mistakes that come back is exactly this one: viajó or viajaba.