The 'past simple' is a verbal tense used in the English language to refer to events that occurred in the past that have no link to the present, although they may have it in a certain context.
The past simple is he simple past perfect tense of the Spanish language and are in these two languages the most common form of the past with no durative value. These represent the most common verb tense in narrative works, such as stories and novels, and also in history texts.
It is important to note that the condition of past simple It is not given by the temporal distance between the event that is being referred to and the present, but is simply based on the fact that the action occurred and ended. This differentiates it from continuous past (past continous), often associated with terms such as 'while', 'at the same time as' or 'during'.
For the speaker who does not have English as his mother tongue, the way to identify the need to use the conjugation of the past simple is by means of any circumstantial that determines a place of time in the past, for example yesterday (yesterday), last week (last week), two years ago (two years ago).
The past simple will not be used in the event that the expression ‘since’ appears, which means 'from', since in that case there is persistence of the action, which requires the use of other verb forms.
See also: Examples of Present Simple in English
In its affirmative form, the ‘past simple’ is constructed without an auxiliary verb, in its interrogative or negative form it does require the verb as an auxiliary 'everything' (analogously to what happens with the present simple), which in this case is 'did'.
When you want to express the past simple in an interrogative form, you should start with this auxiliary particle followed by the verb root (that is, the infinitive verb without 'to'), while when you want to express a negative past action, you will write 'did not 'or its contraction (didn't).
As in the Spanish language, in the past simple verbs can be conjugated in two ways: as regular or as irregular. The former carry the ending 'ed' or 'd', while the latter do not follow a specific rule, although there are certain families of irregular that repeat the same scheme.
Most of the dictionaries English include a section of irregular verbs with their corresponding conjugations in past simple. Among the irregular ones, they stand out as widely used 'did' (verb: to do = do / auxiliary), 'was / were'(verb: to be = to be or to be / auxiliary),' had '(verb: to have = to have / auxiliary), and other non-auxiliaries, such as' went '(past of to go = was) or ´flew' ( passed from to fly = flew).
See also: Examples of Sentences with the verb To Be
| 1. I traveled around your country last summer |
| 2. Yesterday I met your husband at the cinema |
| 3. He was the man who saved my life |
| 4. Did you see his face? |
| 5. We went by bus in that occasion |
| 6. I bought this car in January |
| 7. Suddenly, Tom appeared in my house and asked for his brother |
| 8. I didn’t think about that, sorry! |
| 9. Did she go to the Paris in the August of 2008? |
| 10. They didn’t do it |
| 11. It rained all night |
| 12. Where did you buy those chocolates? |
| 13. I´m sure he was there, I saw him |
| 14. When I was a child, I didn´t like horses |
| 15. Last year I went to Europe with my aunt |
| 16. I wrote a note for you, didn’t you see it? |
| 17. Paul didn’t study for the exam |
| 18. We were best friends during the school |
| 19. Did you see the new building in the center? |
| 20. They didn’t believe him |
Andrea is a language teacher, and on her Instagram account she offers private lessons by video call so that you can learn to speak English.
