"Esa noche Andrea bebía cerveza y yo comía un emparedado."

Translation: That night Andrea was drinking beer and I was eating a sandwich.

[PeterB44]

Duo is still giving us emparedado for the translation of sandwich. In Spain I cannot find anyone who uses this word. We use bocadillo.

[Kayje_]

My in laws (puerto rican) just say sandwich. Was told that if i say emparedado I'll sound like an idiot, so i give duo what it wants but i wont use it irl.

[rosibeiss]

I agree. Nobody of my Spanish or Mexican friends use emparedado.

[jovanpayne]

Duolingo Spanish is South American, not original Spanish.

[b05aplmun.ca]

The Spanish of Spain is also not "orginal Spanish," whatever that is. All regional varieties have changed since Spanish took root in Latin America.

[alexm3728]

¡Que noche para recordar!

[mariixxx]

Drinking beer and eating sandwich is already 'completed' right? So why not preterite?

[21deen]

Not completed actually... It 's in the imperfect "was drinking".

[Haroldvive1]

i am not agree with the system answer: the correct mus be my: that night Andrea drank beer and i ate a sandwich

[rspreng]

Nope. Your version would be bebio' (drank) and comi' (ate)

[Michael307373]

Hi rspreng! I know your post here was a year ago but you're posts/explanations are always so helpful to me. I was hoping you had a suggestion on where I could go to get a handle on all these verb tenses and how they translate between English and Spanish uses. They don't always seem to correspond to one another.

[svdunlap]

I'm confused. My notes from StudySpanish.com say certain words/phrases indicate a specific time frame and signal the use of the preterite. Isn't esa noche - that night - specific? Why is duo using this example for the imperfect?

[telemetry]

That's more of a guideline about what kind of idea someone saying "that night" is probably going to express - talking about an event that happened at a specific time, which would use the preterite

Take a step back for a second
that night I was eating a sandwich
that night I ate a sandwich
these have subtly different meanings, right? A different sense you're trying to get across, the first one can be used for setting the scene before you say "then this happened", that kind of thing. The second one is more common (hence the advice in your notes), but they're both valid ideas you might want to get across, and you use either the imperfect or preterite to express one or the other. In this case, it's the former "at this time this thing was happening" being expressed, so it has to be the imperfect

[trenton]

how is "bebia" was/were drinking? 'Past' yes, but I don't see progressive. Same as to "comia"

[telemetry]

It's just how we express the Imperfect sense of "at this time, this action was in progress" in English

[chicapug]

My parents are native Spanish speakers but they didn't know what emparedado was until I told them. They use sándwich.

[Jesse_D]

I assume then that you could say something like, "...y yo estaba comido un sandwhich" as well right?

[Chris913144]

Why is the verb relating to eating the sandwhich feminine when what is being eaten is masculine

[Fiona325448]

The verbs don't have a feminine or masculine...just tenses.

[RobChristiansen]

Could someone please tell me if they understand this. This how a gringo would say it - [ Esa noche Andrea fue bebiendo cerveza y yo fue comiendo un emparedado. ] The computer understands it, but I don't know about a human.

[DavidMoore622957]

I don't think that's quite right, regardless of any computer understanding. When you form the progressive "was drinking" you use estar and not ser. The verb ser is more often used for forming passive voice expressions (when part of a verb phrase). La cerveza fue bebida por Andrea - "The beer was drunk by Andrea."

If you did say/write estuvo bebiendo rather than bebía, you would be making a point about the time during the drinking. It's like saying "while she was drinking" this happened. The sense of "was drinking" communicated by bebía doesn't draw special attention to the while-it-was-happening aspect. It's merely a distinction between the idea that "she drank" vs. "she was drinking." You aren't trying to say anything about what happened while she was drinking. Using the imperfect merely lets the action be open ended.

So, it's sort of:
Andrea bebió - she drank
Andrea bebía - she was drinking
Andrea estuvo bebiendo - (this happened when) she was drinking

Hopefully, that makes sense. The problem for us gringos is that we don't make all these distinctions via changes in verb tense and aspect, etc. We just use a lot more words and context to communicate the differences.