Preterite

The Preterite (also preterit, praeterite) is the grammatical tense expressing actions which took place in the past. In English, the term 'preterite' is often superseded by 'simple past' or 'past simple', although it is still often heard in its adjectival form (for instance: The preterite form of 'to slay' is 'slew'.).

In German, the Präteritum is used for past actions, but is mostly used solely in writing, for examples in stories, apart from modal verbs and verbs haben and sein, which are common in speech as well. (For example: Es war einmal ein kleines Mädchen, die hies Rotkäppchen.)

The Preterite is a verb tense used in Spanish that indicates an action taken once in the past and ending at a specific time. This is as opposed to the Imperfect, which refers to any repeated or continuous past action. So, "I ran five miles yesterday" would use the first person preterite form of ran, corrí whereas "I ran five miles every morning" would use the first person imperfect form, corría.

Conjugation:

	hablar	comer	insistir
yo	hablé	comí	insistí
tú	hablaste	comiste	insististe
él	habló	comió	insistió
nosotros	hablamos	comemos	insistimos
ellos	hablaron	comieron	insistieron