Eres y Eras

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AnnaC

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Jan 2, 2002
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I may have this all wrong and I can't find them as written in my dictionary.

Does "eres" mean are and "eras" mean were?

Do these words exist?
 

Mirador

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Imperfect Indicative tense conjugation of SER

Anna Coniglio said:
I may have this all wrong and I can't find them as written in my dictionary.

Does "eres" mean are and "eras" mean were?

Do these words exist?


Check this out
 
May 31, 2005
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I don't hava a way of explaining it that pertains to school books... I'm just going to explain it the way that I use these words.

Yes. Example:
Eres buen cantante: you are a good singer
Eras buen cantante: you used to be a good singer

Eres is what you are in the present and eras is what you were in the past.
 

AnnaC

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Dragonfly32837 said:
I don't hava a way of explaining it that pertains to school books... I'm just going to explain it the way that I use these words.

Yes. Example:
Eres buen cantante: you are a good singer
Eras buen cantante: you used to be a good singer

Eres is what you are in the present and eras is what you were in the past.


Thank you. That is the way it has been presented to me. Well not the singer part, but I couldn't find the word "eras" anywhere not even in the link given to me.

BTW what is your first name? I hate calling you dragon because you are nothing like a dragon. ;)
 
May 31, 2005
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I know... That's true. I'm not a dragon. My first name is Adrialis. I am thinking about the Spanish 101 still. I'll let you know soon.
 

MoReNiTa GuApA

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Oct 8, 2004
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A book to help

Hi Anna,

It seems that when you are reading text (in spanish) you can't distiguish the conjugations (or tences) of the verbs.

I used to have this problem as well so I bought a book called 300 spanish verbs and it also comes in the 500 spanish verbs edition. As long as you know what verb you are dealing with it is easy to use.

But don't worry, distiguishing verbs and figuring out the different conjugations will become easy with the more verbs you learn.

MG
 

Marianopolita

Former Spanish forum Mod 2010-2021
Dec 26, 2003
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Anna

I feel the need to give you a brief explanation although verbs in general are an extensive grammar topic. Dragonfly's examples are great but you are missing the grammar details.

I think your knowledge of Italian should come in handy here. I believe the logic is the same.

'Eras' is the 'you' singular form of the verb 'ser' in the imperfect tense. The imperfect tense is one of simple past tenses used in Spanish. The other simple past tense is called the preterit tense and the equivalent form would be 'fuiste'.

The imperfect tense has three equivalent meanings in English. For example using the verb 'hablar' ----> 'hablabas' ('you' singular form) the English translation can be following:

* You spoke
* You used to speak
* You were speaking

In terms of when to use the imperfect tense vs the preterit tense poses some difficulty especially with the verb 'ser' (your example 'eras').

The imperfect tense is a descriptive past tense used to describe continous actions that occured in the past without reference to time and repeated actions. This aspect is the fundamental difference between the imperfect and the preterit tense. The preterit tense is used for completed actions in the past.

Going back to Dragonfly's example 'eras un buen cantante' describes an action that was continuous in the past vs this example 'fuiste a la tienda ayer' (you went to the store yesterday) which is an action that happened once and is a completed one in the past.

I just wanted to keep this brief. Hope this helps.


LDG.

PD. the link has a typo the imperfect tense forms are there the on the 'you' form is missing.
 
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