captabas

Captabas is the second person singular imperfect indicative form of the Spanish verb captar, meaning “you were capturing” or “you used to capture.” The form appears in sentences that describe ongoing past actions or repeated past habits.

Etymology and form: Captar comes from the Spanish root capt- with the infinitive ending -ar. The imperfect suffixes for regular -ar verbs are -aba, -abas, -aba, -ábamos, -abais, -aban. Therefore, captabas is built from the stem capt-, the imperfect marker -aba, and the second person singular ending -s.

Usage: The imperfect tense, including captabas, is used to describe actions in the past that were ongoing, habitual, or backgrounded in a narrative. It often coexists with expressions of time or context such as cuando era niño (when I was a child) or antes (earlier). It can refer to physically capturing something (captar) or to perceiving or understanding something, depending on the sense of captar in a given sentence.

Conjugation example (regular -ar verb captar):

yo captaba, tú captabas, él/ella captaba, nosotros captábamos, vosotros captabais, ellos captaban.

Examples:

- Cuando era niño, captabas cada detalle de la naturaleza.

- En aquella época, tú captabas la atención de todos sin esfuerzo.

Notes: captabas contrasts with captaste (pretérito simple) for a completed past action. It also contrasts with present captas, which describes current capturing or perceiving.

See also: captar, Spanish grammar, imperfect indicative.