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From a student:
So if you’re telling a story about something that happened or talking about memories is there any reason you would use perfekt or would it always be preteritum? Since everything you’ll be saying is about a specific point in time or set of actions. I think I need to go over this more.
We can use both preteritum and perfekt when we are talking about the same situation, because perfekt shows us the meaning of the action, that it has happened, while preteritum shows us the actions and for preteritum it is important that these actions are happened then, in this period or point in time.
An example:
Jag har tittat på den här filmen. Jag och min väninna gick på bio igår. Vi träffades på Hötorget, köpte popcorn och tittade på den.
(We may say these sentences together in Swedish, one after another. The first sentence – I have seen this film at some point in my life, it’s important that I have seen it. The second and the third sentences – I describe when it was and what consecutive actions I have done to achieve it.)
People usually have this question about preteritum and perfekt up until C1 and C2 levels because there are a lot of cases when we use one or another. Now I just want you to remember the word markers that will help you and the main meaning of these tenses: preteritum – the time is important, the exact time in the past; perfekt – the result is important.
Preteritum is close to Past Simple in English, perfekt is close to Present Perfect in English. These analogies usually don’t help even native speakers, so try to remember the main meanings of these tenses and analyze them when you see sentences either in preteritum or perfekt, because Swedish and English are rather different when it comes to small details.
