The spoken past

Latin had one past for completed actions, the perfect: CANTĀVĪ meant both 'I sang' and 'I have sung'. Spoken Latin then built a second, compound past from HABĒRE 'to have' plus a participle, out of phrases of the type HABEŌ EPISTULAM SCRĪPTAM 'I have a letter (that is) written'. Every sister inherited both pasts, and Catalan added a third. What differs is which one people actually use when they talk.

So for a finished event yesterday, Spanish and Portuguese use the simple past, while French, standard Italian and Romanian use the compound. The French passé simple has left speech altogether: you will read il arriva, ils firent, elle fut in novels and newspapers, but never hear them in conversation. Catalan has a past of its own, the periphrastic past: the present of anar 'to go', in special forms (vaig, vas, va, vam, vau, van), plus the infinitive. Beware the false friend: Spanish voy a comer and French je vais manger mean 'I'm going to eat', but Catalan vaig menjar means 'I ate'. Portuguese compound, built with ter, means something else again: tenho comido is 'I've been eating (lately)'.

The map matters

Spain draws the line at today: he comido for today and for life experience, comí for anything before. Latin America, the Canary Islands and much of northwestern Spain prefer comí even for today, and so does Portuguese on both sides of the Atlantic. In Italy the north uses the passato prossimo almost exclusively; Tuscany keeps a Spanish-like distinction; in the south, especially Sicily and Calabria, everyday speech uses the passato remoto widely, even for recent events. France has one spoken past, the passé composé, everywhere, and Romania nearly so: the perfect simplu survives in speech mainly in the southwest (Oltenia). Catalan draws Spain's line at today too, but with vaig menjar on the far side of it; the old simple past (mengí) is mostly literary, somewhat more alive in Valencian.