“Tener” in preterite, also known as the simple past tense, is used to describe completed actions that occurred at a specific time in the past. It has two forms, regular and irregular. Regular verbs follow a set pattern of adding “-ó” to the verb’s stem for all persons except for the third person plural, which takes “-eron”. Irregular verbs have unique forms that need to be memorized. “Tener” is irregular and its preterite forms are: “tuve” (I), “tuviste” (you), “tuvo” (he/she), “tuvimos” (we), and “tuvieron” (they).
