Spanish verb endings spanish dictionary full#

In the case of comer, the stem is com-.Įach class of verbs uses a different conjugation pattern, and changes based on who the subject of the sentence is. So to understand where to begin conjugating, you need to identify what kind of verb ending it has in its infinitive form, and what the stem of the verb is. I used comer (“to eat”) as an example above: it’s an -er verb, because it’s infinitive form ends in “er”. These are the infinitive verb endings (or dictionary form of the verb).

Spanish Verb Conjugation: The Basicsįirst things first: there are three classes of Spanish verbs: -ar verbs, -er verbs, and -ir verbs. You’ll need to know that because the infinitive form defines how verbs get classified. In English, infinitives usually have the word “to” in front of them, such as “to eat” ( comer in Spanish). This is the dictionary form: the way the verb appears in the dictionary, unconjugated. You do need to know the infinitive form of Spanish verbs, too. But you should go back to those later after you’ve mastered the main three tenses. If you’re curious, there’s also the imperfect, perfect, conditional, subjunctive, imperative, and gerund forms, too. You can get a lot of things across from these tenses and still be understood in the beginning. The three main tenses you should learn first in Spanish are the present ( el presente), the past (also called the preterite, el pretérito), and the future ( el futuro). Spanish Verb Tenses: The 3 Main Tenses to Master In this article, I’ll focus on the three main Spanish verb tenses for regular verbs: present, past and future.

And once you know the basics, and some of the common irregular verbs, it’s easier to get a sense of how a verb should change. You can learn regular Spanish verb conjugation patterns pretty fast. The good news is most other aspects of Spanish are much easier. That’s because Spanish has so many irregular verbs.īut if you think about it, so does English! Think find/found, sell/sold and ring/rang, to name just a few.Īnd you already learned those patterns. Verb conjugation in Spanish often seems unpredictable, with few rules to follow. ?įor many Spanish learners, conjugations are one of the trickiest parts of the language to get used to.

Spanish verb endings spanish dictionary full#

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