Past habit – used to/would/past simple 过去的习惯—used

When we talk about things that happened in the past but don’t happen anymore we can do it in different ways.

当我们谈论发生在过去而现在不再发生的事情的时候，我们能用以下几种表达方式。

Used to

• We used to live in New York when I was a kid.
• There didn’t use to be a petrol station there. When was it built?

We can use ‘used to’ to talk about past states ….

我们能用used to去表示过去的状态。

… or we can use ‘used to’ to talk about repeated past actions

或者用used to去谈论重复的过去的动作。

Remember that ‘used to’ is only for past states/actions that don’t happen now – we can’t use it for things that still happen now. Also, ‘used to + infinitive’ should not be confused with ‘be/get used to + ‘ing’ form’ – this is covered in a separate section.

请记住，used to只能用于现在不再发生的状态或者动作，我们不能用它形容现在还在发生的事情。同样的，used to+动词不定式不要和be/get used to + ‘ing’ 形式混淆，这个区别会在其他章节里涉及。

Would

• Every Saturday I would go on a long bike ride.
• My teachers would always say “Sit down and shut up!”

We can use ‘would’ to talk about repeated past actions.

我们用would来谈论重复的过去的动作。

Often either ‘would’ or ‘used to’ is possible. Both of these sentences are possible.

一般来讲，would和used to都是可以用于谈论过去的动作，下面两个句子都是说的过去的。

However, only ‘used to’ is possible when we talk about past states.

但是，只有“used to”是可以用于谈论过去的状态。

Past simple

一般过去时

• We went/used to go/would go to the same beach every summer.

We can use the past simple in the same way as ‘used to’ and ‘would’ to talk about repeated past actions.

一般过去时可以跟used to和would同样的用法去说明过去重复的动作。

We can also use the past simple for past states.

我们同样可以用一般过去时表示过去的状态。

However, if something happened only once we can’t use ‘used to’ or ‘would’ – we must use the past simple.

但是，如果过去的某事是只发生了一次的，我们不能用used to或者would，我们必须用一般过去时。