A verb is a word used to describe an action, state or occurrence. In English, verbs are preceded by ‘to’, i.e. to be, to have, to love, etc. For native English speakers, Spanish verbs can cause initial confusion. The way Spanish verbs work is somewhat different from that of their English counterparts. Spanish verbs are generally logical so there is no need to worry. Before we get stuck-in, I feel it’s important that we are all fully aware of how verbs work in our native English so that we can compare and contrast.
English Verb Construction
Before we get started, it’s important to understand several grammatical phrases:
Tense: The form a verb takes to indicate the time of an action, i.e. past tense, future tense, etc.
Conjugation: The different forms that a verb takes, i.e. run, runs, ran, etc.
Infinitive form: The basic form of a verb without any indication of tense or subject, in English the infinitive is always proceeded by ‘to’, i.e. to speak, to talk, to laugh, etc.
Pronoun: A word used in place of a name to indicate someone or something, i.e. he, she, them, etc.
In English, verbs have a maximum of two forms, also knows as conjugations, for most tenses:
To Run
| I run |
We run |
| You run |
You (all) run |
| He/She/It runs |
They run |
To eat
| I eat |
We eat |
| You eat |
You (all) eat |
| He/She/It eats |
They eat |
As you can see with the above examples, the basic form of the verbs (which are in the present tense) is either the standard infinitive form or the standard infinitive form with an -s at the end (i.e. run and runs). We know who the verb refers to by looking at the initial subject pronoun: I/you/he/she/it/we/they – without the subject pronoun, verbs in English don’t work, we must always add this to qualify exactly who we are referring to. In Spanish however, things are quite different, so let’s find out how:
Spanish Verb Construction
Spanish verbs are classified into three different categories, these are -AR verbs, -ER verbs and -IR verbs. That is to say, verbs ending in -ar, -er and -ir. All spanish verbs fall into one of these categories. This classification is important to understand and remember because the rules for verb conjugation are different depending on the category of verb.
Verbs in Spanish have far more conjugations (derivations) than their English counterparts. The reason for this is simple, Spanish verbs carry more information that English verbs. An English verb tells us:
- The tense of the verb, i.e. present, past, future, etc.
A Spanish verbs on the other hand tells us:
- The tense of the verb.
- The subject of the verb, i.e. the person performing the action of the verb.
Remember as I stated earlier, all English verbs must be accompanied by a subject pronoun so we know who is performing the action of the verb. To simply say ‘talks’ for example is incomplete in English, we don’t know who is performing the action of talking; is it him/her/it? We must qualify this by adding a subject pronoun, i.e. ’she talks’: now we know who is performing the action. In Spanish on the other hand, there is no need for this subject pronoun as the by looking at the verb conjugation, we know who is performing the action. It follows logically therefore that basic Spanish tenses have at least six conjugations representing the 6 groups of subject pronouns::
| |
English |
Spanish |
| First Person |
I
|
Yo
|
| Second Person |
You
|
Tú (familiar)
Usted (formal) |
| Third Person |
He/She/It
|
Él/Ella/Lo/La
|
| First Person Plural |
We
|
Nosotros
|
| Second Person Plural |
You (all)
|
Vosotros (familiar)
Usteded (formal) |
| Third Person Plural |
They
|
Ellos
|
Let us examine this with the Spanish verb ‘hablar’ (an -AR verb) which means ‘to talk’. Below is a list of the verb’s six present tense conjugations:
| (yo) hablo |
(nosotros) hablamos |
| (tú) Hablas
(usted) habla |
(vosotros) habláis
(ustedes) hablan |
| (él/ella/lo/la) habla |
(ellos) hablan |
Notice that I have placed the subject pronouns in brackets to indicate that they are not needed and most often omitted. The subject pronoun is usually added for emphasis. Above we have the basic rules for conjugating any -AR verb in the present tense. The ending of the verb tells us who is performing the action. The basic rule is thus:
To conjugate a verb, take its stem (the verb without the -AR, -ER or -IR ending, and affix the ending that corresponds to the subject.
So the stem of ‘hablar’ is ‘habl’, that is to say, the verb without its ending; in this form it is incomplete, we must affix an ending to complete the verb. From the example above we can see that the -o ending is for the first person (I), so if we add -o to the stem we get ‘hablo’ (habl + o), which means ‘I speak’.
This is the standard way in which all regular verbs in Spanish are conjugated.
The stem of a verb is simply the verb without its -AR, -ER or -IR ending.
What we must commit to memory therefore are the various endings corresponding to each subject. These are different for most tenses.
