The past

Saber is facts and skills; conocer is people and places. The forms, the split, and what each one means in the past tense, where they change meaning.

He hablado, has comido, ha vivido. How to build it, the eight irregular participles, and why the pretérito does this job in Peru.

Spanish has two past tenses and English has one, so the rule has to come from somewhere other than translation. The question that decides it, every time.

Four past forms for two verbs. Era describes and fue narrates; estaba is the state you were in and estuvo is a stretch that ended.

Estaba haciendo is how you say "was doing" — but Spanish reaches for it far less than English, because the imperfect already carries that meaning.

Iba already means "used to go". Solía ir adds emphasis, and estar acostumbrado a is a different thing entirely — here is which one you need.

Alguna vez asks whether you have ever done something; nunca and jamás answer no. Where each one goes, and when Spanish doubles the negative.

Ya is "already" or "right now", ya no is "not anymore", todavía is "still" and todavía no is "not yet". Four boxes, and what Peru does with ya.

Two interchangeable endings, one formation rule that never fails, and the handful of sentence shapes that make it compulsory rather than optional.

Había llegado — the past before the past. How it is built, the time words that pull it in, and the había sido you will hear in Peru.

The present perfect progressive is correct Spanish and mostly the wrong choice. Llevo tres años viviendo acá is what people actually say.

Haya plus a participle. It is the present perfect wearing subjunctive clothes, and it has exactly two jobs worth learning.

Turning what someone said into dijo que: which tense moves back, what happens to hoy and mañana, and when Peruvians leave the present alone.

Present, perfect, imperfect, pluperfect. Two questions pick the right one every time, and they are not four separate tenses to memorise.