Nosotros _____ Con La Maestra Hablarã© Hablarã¡s Hablaremos Hablarã¡n

What is a Verb?

Generally speaking a verb is the discussion in a sentence that conveys an activity. The verbs in the post-obit sentences have been underlined:

Lionel Messi
plays
soccer.
Taylor Swift
sings
“You Vest With Me.”
Marta, Yolanda, and I
accept
chemistry class together.
George Clooney and Brad Pitt
star
in “Ocean’southward eleven.”

Verbs can also express a land of beingness:

They
are
very happy.

What is Conjugating?

Conjugating is the deed of taking a verb and changing it so that it “agrees” with its bailiwick. For example let’south change the subject of this judgement, “Nosotros have a ladder,” from “we” to “Manuel”:

We
have
a ladder. → Manuel
has
a ladder.

In order for the subject and verb to agree, nosotros needed to modify the verb “have” into “has.” This is conjugation.

It sounds funny when a verb is conjugated incorrectly:

I has a ladder.

If you’ve grown up speaking English you can conjugate verbs without even thinking nearly it; it just comes naturally. Conjugating verbs in Spanish, however, will non come hands. You’ll need to cease and think every fourth dimension, and practice, practice, practice until it becomes second nature.

Infinitives

A non-conjugated verb is known equally an “infinitive.” Since there is no subject specified, an infinitive has “infinite” conjugation possibilities. English infinitives include the discussion “to.” Check out the chart beneath and compare the infinitives to some conjugated counterparts. Discover how there is no indication as to what the subject field of an infinitive is:

infinitive:		conjugated:
to play	→	he plays
to sing	→	she sings
to accept	→	we have
to be	→	they are

Unlike English infinitives, Spanish infinitives are only 1 give-and-take, simply they’re however pretty easy to spot.

3 Types of Spanish Infinitives

All Spanish infinitives have one of three endings: “-ar,” “-er,” or “-ir.” For example:

hablar

to speak

comer

to eat

vivir

to alive

Spanish verbs are categorized, appropriately enough, as “-ar” verbs, “-er” verbs, or “-ir” verbs. Some more than examples:

-AR verbs:
cantar to sing estudiar to study tocar to play

-ER verbs:
beber to drink correr to run leer to read

-IR verbs:
abrir to open escribir to write recibir to receive

Conjugating Spanish Verbs

Verb Tenses

Before we get into conjugating verbs, we need to briefly talk almost “tenses.” A tense is a course of a verb that indicates what fourth dimension frame you’re referring to. There are iii bones tenses: past, present, and future:

I ran.

I run.

I will run.

But at that place also are more tenses (in both English language and Spanish). For example:

I had run.

I have run.

I will have run.

There are specific lessons for each and every tense on this website, but for the time existence we’ll work with the present tense.

Imagine that we wanted to say “I speak” in Spanish. The first footstep is identifying the subject. Here’s a quick reminder of possible subject field pronouns from the previous lesson:

	singular:	plural:
showtime person:	yo	we, nosotras
second person, informal:	tú	vosotros, vosotras
second person, formal:	usted	ustedes
3rd person:	él, ella	ellos, ellas

So we’ll need to employ
yo
(I) as our subject.

The adjacent pace is finding the infinitive we need and breaking it into two parts: the stalk and the ending. A good dictionary volition tell us that “to speak” is
hablar
in Castilian. The stem of
hablar
is “habl” and the catastrophe is “-ar”:

infinitive:	stem:	catastrophe:
hablar	habl	-ar

Verb Ending Charts

Now nosotros need to expect upwardly (or better nonetheless, memorize) the advisable nautical chart of verb endings. The present tense “-ar” verb endings are listed in a nautical chart below, to the correct. (Remember we’re using “-ar” verb charts considering
hablar
is an “-ar” verb.) To the left are discipline pronouns once more. Find how each box on the subject pronouns chart corresponds to a box on the verb endings chart. This is not a coincidence:

subject area pronouns: yo nosotros,-as tú vosotros,-as usted ustedes él, ella ellos, ellas

↔

“-ar” endings: -o -amos -as -áis -a -an -a -an

We demand to find the ending that corresponds with our subject. Since our subject is
yo, we’ll add together the verb ending “-o” to our stem (“habl”):

bailiwick pronouns: yo nosotros,-as tú vosotros,-as usted ustedes él, ella ellos, ellas

↔

“-ar” endings: -o -amos -as -áis -a -an -a -an

Put it all together and nosotros get:

Yo hablo.
I speak.

Permit’s endeavor another. The infinitive
dibujar
means “to draw.” How practise we conjugate it to mean “nosotros draw”? Strip off the ending, identify the subject field pronoun (nosostros), and add the advisable ending (“-amos”) to the stem (“dibuj”):

subject field pronouns: yo nosotros,-as tú vosotros,-as usted ustedes él, ella ellos, ellas

↔

“-ar” endings: -o -amos -as -áis -a -an -a -an

Add together the bailiwick pronoun and we get:

Nosotros dibujamos.
We draw.

OK, so what about “-er” and “-ir” verbs? We will follow the same process but we need to use different charts. Here all all three (present tense) charts together. Detect the similarities and differences:

“-ar” endings:

-o	-amos
-as	-áis
-a	-an
-a	-an

“-er” endings:

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-o	–emos
–due eastsouthward	–éis
–e	–edue north
–east	–en

“-ir” endings:

-o	–imos
-es	–ís
-e	-en
-due east	-en

The infinitive
correr
means “to run.” Permit’s use information technology to say “You run.” (In this case the “you” will exist a singular, informal “y’all.”)

The stem is “corr.” The ending (from the “-er” nautical chart) is “-es.” Add together a subject pronoun and we get:

Tú corres.
You run.

(Remember we’re pulling the ending from the “-er” chart because
correr
is an “-er” verb.)

How about an “-ir” verb?
Vivir
ways “to live.” Let’southward use information technology to say “We live.” The stem is “viv,” the catastrophe is “-imos,” and the subject field is “nosotros”:

Nosotros vivimos.
We alive.

Failing to cohabit verbs correctly sounds just as bad in Spanish as it does in English. If yous say “I has a ladder” in English, people will look at your funny. Aforementioned thing if yous say “Nosotros viven” in Spanish.

Simplified Verb Ending Charts

You lot won’t ofttimes meet verb charts like the ones shown above. Why? Because they’re slightly more complicated than they need to be. Notice how the
usted
endings are all the same as the
él
/
ella
endings? And how the
ustedes
endings are yet as the
ellos
/
ellas
endings? That’southward non only truthful of present tense verb endings; information technology’s true of all the other tenses as well. Therefore it’s much easier to meaty the endings into six box grids, like this:

That ways your corresponding discipline pronouns nautical chart should actually look similar this:

subject pronouns:

yo	nosotros,-every bit
tú	vosotros,-equally
él, ella, Ud.	ellos, ellas, Uds.

Simply remember that nosotros’re putting the the
Ud.
in the
él
/
ella
box just to simplify things, not because it means “he” or “she.” Also, recall that
Uds.
doesn’t mean “they.” It’south only in the
ellos
/
ellas
box because the verb endings are the same.

Make sure you sympathise this grid. It’due south very important; you’ll be seeing a lot of it as you report Spanish.

Subjects Not on the Chart?

What if you want to use a subject that’due south not on the subject chart? Think that those are pronouns, or words that take the place of other nouns. You lot don’t have to utilise a pronoun, but you lot still need to pull the ending from the corresponding place on the chart:

Barack Obama ≈ él	→	Barack Obama habla.
Ramón and I ≈ nosotros	→	Ramón y yo corremos.
Susana and Ramón ≈ ellos	→	Susana y Ramón viven.

Irregular Verbs

All this conjugation stuff may already seem overwhelming, but you should know that (almost) every verb tense has sure verbs that do not follow the normal rules for conjugations. Those verbs are know as “irregular” verbs. You’ll have to specifically memorize their conjugations because the normal procedures don’t work. Hither’s an example of an infamous irregular verb in the present tense,
ser
(to be):

soy	somos
eres	sois
es	son

None of the conjugations follow any of the rules. Lovely, isn’t it?

Just before yous start complaining about irregular Spanish verbs, consider how irregular English language can exist. Imagine if you were a Spanish speaker having to learn this:

to play (regular):	to be (irregular):
I play	I am
You lot play	You are
He plays	She is
Nosotros play	Nosotros are
They play	They are

Omitting Field of study Pronouns

Due to the fact that many English verb conjugations are the same, bailiwick pronouns are very important. Look what happens if nosotros leave one out:

Plays soccer.

What is the subject? He, she, it? We tin’t tell. The opposite is true in Spanish. Considering there are many different conjugations, the verb ofttimes makes it obvious what the subject is, and a pronoun isn’t necessary. For example:

Hablamos español.
We speak Spanish.

Corres muy rápidamente.
Yous run very quickly.

Vivo en Tijuana.
I live in Tijuana.

Conjugating Verbs in Other Tenses

Dissimilar tenses have dissimilar rules for conjugating. Some tenses only have i or ii sets of verb endings. Other tenses require you to add endings to the infinitive, not the stem. Still others require you lot to create an entirely different stem, but the same basic principle of bailiwick verb agreement holds truthful. You will ever discover the subject yous need from the bailiwick pronouns chart, and so observe the ending y’all need in the corresponding box on the verb endings chart.

For Further Study

For more information on conjugating in the present tense, read The Nowadays Tense (Part ane).

To run into samples of verb conjugations in every tense, check out the Spanish Verb Conjugator.

To practice conjugating verbs, try out ¡Practiquemos! Verb Conjugation Exercises.