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From: laura@utcsstat.UUCP (Laura Creighton)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: Orphaned Response - (nf)
Message-ID: <1628@utcsstat.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 8-Jan-84 18:51:19 EST
Article-I.D.: utcsstat.1628
Posted: Sun Jan  8 18:51:19 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 8-Jan-84 19:11:28 EST
References: <4803@uiucdcs.UUCP>, <1134@mit-eddie.UUCP>
Organization: U. of Toronto, Canada
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It is funny, but i was told the opposite -- use the preterite in
Spanish when in doubt, not the imperfect. Strange, but when I travelled
and lived in South America, I discovered that the imperfect was more
heavily used. 

There is one advantage to using the imperfect over using the preterite.
While Spanish is a lot more regular than in English, there are
irregular verbs in the preterite (but they are all irregular in the
same way..) while there are only 3 irregular verbs in the imperfect.
So you can say anything correctly in the imperfect without working
very hard at it, while doing the same thing in the preterite is
much harder. (But still *tons* easier than in English or -- shudder --
Russian).

Laura Creighton
utzoo!utcsstat!laura