📖LearnModule 3 · Lesson 3 of 30Basic User · CEFR A2, first halfUnit 1 · El pretérito — the past, part I
Hice, fui — the famous irregulars
Module 3 of the free Spanish course (CEFR A2, first half), lesson 3 of 30: Two giants have irregular pasts: hacer gives hice, hiciste, hizo, hicimos, hicieron. On this page: 8 words with their genders and respellings, the rule, a watch-out line, the conjugation table and the audio — the study notes behind the workbook's QR.
The words
Spanish
English
Say it
yo hice
I did / I made
yoh EE-seh
yo fui
I went / I was
yoh FWEE
él hizo la tarea
he did the homework
ehl EE-soh lah tah-REH-ah
nosotros fuimos al parque
we went to the park
noh-SOH-trohs FWEE-mohs ahl PAR-keh
ella fue feliz
she was happy
EH-yah fweh feh-LEES
feliz
happy
feh-LEES
la fiesta
the party
lah FYEHS-tah
ellos hicieron una fiesta
they had a party
EH-yohs ee-SYEH-rohn OO-nah FYEHS-tah
Respellings follow the course’s say-it key; the stressed syllable is in capitals. Print this lesson’s flashcards (PDF) — the words on the front, the English and respelling on the back.
La regla · The rule
Two giants have irregular pasts: hacer gives hice, hiciste, hizo, hicimos, hicieron; ir gives fui, fuiste, fue, fuimos, fueron. No accents anywhere on these two — the irregular stems carry the stress themselves.
Y también · And also
And a gift: ser has EXACTLY the same past as ir. Fui al parque is "I went to the park"; fui feliz is "I was happy". The sentence tells you which verb you are looking at.
Ojo · Watch out
hizo takes a z, the only form of hacer that does: hice, hiciste, hizo. And fui serves two verbs: fui a la escuela (I went) and fui contento (I was).
hacer, pretérito — the table
yo hice · tú hiciste · él/ella/usted hizo · nosotros hicimos · ustedes hicieron · ellos/ellas hicieron
ir, pretérito — the table
yo fui · tú fuiste · él/ella/usted fue · nosotros fuimos · ustedes fueron · ellos/ellas fueron
ser, pretérito — the table
yo fui · tú fuiste · él/ella/usted fue · nosotros fuimos · ustedes fueron · ellos/ellas fueron
Do it now — on paper
Say all 8 words aloud twice from the respelling, then once from the Spanish spelling alone — begin with yo hice.
Copy every word with its accents on paper; then cover the English column and write each meaning back from the Spanish.
Write out hacer, pretérito and ir, pretérito and ser, pretérito in full from memory, every person, and check each form against the table above.
This free course is the reading half. The writing half — write-in lessons, daily practice pages with built-in review, self-checks and a full answer key — is the companion workbook series, The Spanish Ladder: one workbook per module, fifteen in all, released band by band with the Basic band (Modules 1–5) first.
Keep these words
Turn this lesson’s words into flashcards, then space your reviews — the two habits the research behind our study guides backs hardest.