Same question. So confusing

Question

ReynoldC1Kwiziq Q&A regular contributor“I am confused when " preterito " is appended to most of the tenses. This practice is not widely used in Spain or Latin countries. Why not use the tenses which are commonly used. I know that the preterite is used for past tense so when preterito perfecto subjuntivo is mentioned I expect that the past subjunctive is meant NOT the perfect subjunctive! I wonder whether other participants experience the same problem.“  In school, we never learned the English equivalents of these various subjunctive terms.  We didn’t really learn much about the subjunctive in English at all.  It was a whole new concept beginning to learn it in Spanish.  How is it taught to Spanish speaking children? Do they find it confusing?Like23 years agoShare

Accepted Answer

Hola Julia
The word "pretérito" has always been "attached" to all past tenses in Spanish. At school children learn the full names as the RAE still present them. Click here and scroll down to see how they still use "pret." on their names. However, as these names are so long, we often refer to them with their shorten name, for example "el pretérito imperfecto" would be "el imperfecto" or the most common shorten name for the simple past is "el indefinido". 
As there are different names used both in Spain and Latin America, we created this table so students can get familiar with all the different names. 
Tenses names (kwiziq)
I hope this helps.
Saludos cordiales
Inma