Ordinary Spoken Narrative Past

Vaig parlar presents a completed past event: I spoke. The infinitive stays unchanged for every person, while the auxiliary identifies the subject. Unlike lexical anar to a destination, this construction has no a before the infinitive.

The ordinary auxiliary forms are vaig, vas, va, vam, vau and van; the standard variants vàrem and vàreu also occur. Present lexical anar instead has anem and aneu for the two plural persons. Thus vam anar means we went, not we go.

Use the construction for bounded events in narration and ordinary reports. It is not restricted to an event that lasted only a moment. For background or habitual past viewed without its limits, the imperfect may be more suitable. Regional simple-past forms can convey the same completed-event meaning.