Estaba buscando vs buscaba

Hola,

Minor question. In Lesson 16.2, there is a pair of sentences, “Me estaba buscando. Me llamaba por teléfono…”  Could this equally be “me buscaba, me llamaba”, or “me estaba buscando, me estaba llamando”? What is the subtlety between “me estaba buscando” and “me buscaba”? And is there is nuance using first “me estaba buscando”, but then, “me llamaba”? Both are translated the same in English, “he was looking for me, he was calling me”, and in French one would use the imperfect for both, so I'm trying to grasp the subtlety in Spanish. Gracias! 

 ¡Hola, Heather-qj9d!

Thanks for your question! 

Telling the difference between el imperfecto continuo “the imperfect continuous” (e.g. estaba buscando “was looking for”) and el imperfecto “the imperfect” (e.g. buscaba “was looking for”) can be difficult at first for Spanish learners since, as you've pointed out, they often get translated the same way in English. We actually have an entire section devoted to explaining the difference between these tenses in Lesson 12.5: “It Was Happening Then,” titled "'El imperfecto' vs. 'El imperfecto continuo,'" which you can check out if you'd like to get a full, thorough explanation with plenty of additional example sentences.  

For the example that you're asking about, the most important difference to note is that el imperfecto continuo highlights the fact that the action being described was ongoing, or in the middle of happening, more than el imperfecto does. So saying Me estaba buscando instead of Me buscaba for “(He) was looking for me” simply emphasizes the ongoing or in progress nature of the action of looking. The situation is the same with Me llamaba por teléfono “(He) was calling me on the phone”: if we were to say estaba llamando instead of llamaba, we would be stressing that the call was in the middle of happening.

I hope that this helps to answer your questions! Do check out the lesson if you'd like to learn some more about this, and be sure to let me know if you still have any questions. 

Saludos,

Liss