subject: How To Conjugate Spanish Verbs [print this page] In order to conjugate Spanish verbs correctly we need to understand what a verb is and what a conjugation is. My old teachers used to tell me that a verb is a doing word, and to be honest, it is the most straight-forward and accurate explanation of a verb I have ever heard, so I'm going to stick with it:
A conjugation, on the other hand, is a little bit more difficult to explain simply; but I'll give it a try. A conjugation is a variation of a verb that uses the stem of a verb and various different endings; each ending indicating the person or object performing the task and when the task is or was being performed (tense).
There are three groups of verbs in Spanish, and they are called the -ar, -er and -ir verbs, so-called because every verb in Spanish has one of those three endings. The -ar group of verbs is by far the largest; and therefore has the highest concentration of regular verbs, so we will show how to conjugate Spanish verbs of this group first:
Hablar (to speak)
habl-o - I speak; habl-as - you speak (singular, familiar, habl-a - he/she/it speaks or, you speak(singular, polite; habl-amos - we speak; habl-ais (accent on a) - you speak (plural, familiar); habl-an - they or you speak (plural, polite.
You'll notice, as mentioned earlier, that to conjugate Spanish verbs we utilize the stem of the verb and a different ending that highlights the person(s) or object performing the task, in this case, 'habl' is the stem.
You will find that with all regular verbs, the stem will be the verb minus the ending. Also, we are only dealing with the present tense here; there will of course be different endings and variations on stem depending on which tense is being used.
Here's how to conjugate Spanish verbs ending with -er and -ir;
We will use aprender (to learn) and escribir (to write) for examples of regular -er and -ir present tense conjugations.
aprend-e escrib-o - I learn/ write; aprend-es escrib-es - you learn/ write (singular, familiar); aprend-e escrib-e - he/she/it learns/ writes, or you learn/ write (singular, polite); aprend-emos escrib-imos - we learn/ write; aprend-eis escrib-is - you learn/ write (plural, familiar)(accent on e & i); aprend-en escrib-en - they, you learn/ write (plural, polite).
Hopefully this will give you an incite into how to conjugate Spanish verbs, obviously there are a lot of different tenses that will all have different conjugations, not to mention the many irregular verbs that don't follow regular conjugational patterns.
There are Spanish conjugators available online that can help immensely with studying Spanish verbs many of which are free. However, they are free for a reason so expect them to be limited in their usefulness. It is better to invest in a conjugator that works in tune with your abilities at any stage of your studies.
