LES: Lesson - Verb Conjugation, Introduction

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Verb Conjugation - An Introduction

The biggest difference between English verbs and Spanish verbs is how they are conjugated. Spanish verbs change their forms based on a set of characteristics, including person (who is doing the action), number (how many are doing the action), and tense (when is the action happening). For each change in characteristic, in Spanish, there will be a change in the verb form. This change is called conjugation.

English Verbs

Meanwhile, English verbs are also conjugated, but in a much more limited way. Instead of having a separate form to account for each of the characteristics mentioned above (person, number, and tense), each English verb has a small set of forms. Take the verb to call as an example. In English, that verb has four forms:

  • call (plain/present)
  • calls (3rd person singular present form)
  • calling (called the gerund or the present participle)
  • called (called the preterit or the perfect participle)

And that's it! Some verbs have an extra fifth form, like the verb to speak:

  • speak
  • speaks
  • speaking
  • spoke (preterit form)
  • spoken (perfect participle form)

That extra past tense form is used following helping verbs (compare: I spoke vs. I have spoken). Don't worry - this is not an English class, so you don't necessarily need to remember all the technical terms (participle, gerund, etc.), but it's useful to lay it all out when it comes to a comparison with Spanish.

What we do in English is we use a series of additional words, both subject pronouns and helping verbs, to provide all of the various meanings/timeframes we need. We can change person and number by changing the pronoun (We speak vs. You speak) and we can change the tense and aspect (timeframe) by including different helping verbs (I might speak vs. I will speak).

By having a limited number of actual verb forms (remember above: every very has either four or five forms total), we rely on a lot of contexts to understand the who and the how of each verb.

Conjugations - Groups of Verbs in Spanish

Before looking at an example of the challenges of learning Spanish verbs, it is important to point out that this process is further complicated by the fact that there are three categories (called conjugations) that we deal with. It has to do with the spelling of the infinitive form of the Spanish verb. An example of an infinitive verb would be the verb hablar, which means to speak. Hablar is an -ar verb.

The other two forms are -er verbs (e.g., comer—to eat) and -ir verbs (e.g., vivir—to live). So, we deal with three infinitive endings, each having its own pattern of conjugation. In other words, each group of verbs (conjugation) has a set of rules which determines how those verbs are formed (conjugated).

The Basics of Conjugation - Creating a Verb Stem

Spanish uses conjugations to differentiate between person (I, you, he, etc.) and timeframe (present, past, future, etc.).

Spanish does this by removing the -ar, -ir, or -er from the infinitive spelling and adding separate endings. Let’s explore this by conjugation the verb hablar in the present tense.

  • Hablar - ar = habl-
  • To that form (called a verb stem), we add the personal endings: -o, -as, -a, -amos, (áis - only in Spain), -an
    • hablo - I speak
    • hablas - you (informal) speak
    • habla - he, she, it speaks; you (formal, sing) speak
    • hablamos - we speak
    • (habláis - you (informal, pl) speak - Spain only)
    • hablan - they speak; you (formal, pl) speak

You've seen conjugated verbs in previous lessons (ser and tener, for instance) and we often put those forms in a chart like this:

Conjugation of Hablar in the Present Tense
Person Singular Plural
1st Person (Yo) hablo (Nosotros) hablamos
2nd Person (informal) (Tú) hablas (Vosotros) habláis - Spain only!
3rd Person (Él/Ella) habla (Ellos/Ellas) hablan
2nd Person (formal) (Usted/Ud.) habla (Ustedes/Uds.) hablan

Note that the subject pronouns are included, but are placed in parenthesis - more on that later!

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