Friday, November 11, 2016 0 comments

Learning Verb Conjugations in Spanish: Regular Verbs

So I've been learning some Spanish and one of the important parts you have to learn is the verb conjugation (verbo conjugacion), and I don't want to dissuade anyone who wants to learn Spanish out there but this is one of the complex things you'll have to learn in Spanish. To know what I'm talking about, here is how "to eat" (comer) is conjugated. Compared to English, there are only a few categories that will make an English verb conjugate namely tense, number, aspect, mood and voice. But with Spanish verbs it involves tense, number, person, T-V Distinction (familiar or respectful), mood, aspect, voice.

http://grammar.spanishintexas.org/verbs/ar-verbs/


So I decided to take baby steps in learning this aspect of the language and not get information overload by reading everything in one take.

For this post, I will focus on the indicative mood. The Indicative Mood is used to talk about actions, events, or states that are believed to be facts or true. It is very typical in speech for making factual statements or describing obvious qualities of a person or situation.
The indicative mood can mean three things for its present tense.
e.g. El bebe leche.
       He drinks milk.
       He does drink milk.
       He is drinking milk.

First, we must know that there are three types of Spanish Infinitive verbs.
-ar verb
-er verb
-ir verb

The words I am going to use as examples for these types of verbs are the following:
hablar (to speak)
leer (to read)
escribir (to write)

Second, I studied how they are conjugated according to their respective subject pronouns.
Spanish Subject Pronouns
Singular
yo (I)
tu (you-familiar)
usted (you-formal)
el (he)
ella (she)

Plural
nosotros/nosotras (we)
vosotros/vosotras (you-all-familiar)
ustedes (you-all-formal)
ellos/ellas (they)

A quick reminder: vosotros/vosotras is not used in South American countries, so you can omit learning it if you want to speak the South American Spanish way.

Here is how we conjugate each type of infinitive.

To conjugate -ar verbs, drop the -ar ending and add:

yo                             -o (hablos)
tu                              -as (hablas)
Usted/El/Ella            -a (habla)
nosotros/as              -amos (hablamos)
vosotros/as              -áis (hablais)
Ustedes/Ellos/Ellas -an (hablan)

To conjugate -er verbs, drop the -er ending and add:

yo                             -o (leo)
tu                              -es (lees)
Usted/El/Ella            -e (lee)
nosotros/as              -emos (leemos)
vosotros/as              -eis (leeis)
Ustedes/Ellos/Ellas -en (leen)

To conjugate -ir verbs, drop the -ir ending and add:

yo                             -o (escribo)
tu                              -es (escribes)
Usted/El/Ella            -e (escribe)
nosotros/as              -imos (escribimos)
vosotros/as              -is (escribis)
Ustedes/Ellos/Ellas -en (escriben)


To use the words in a sentence:

Usted habla Ingles. (You speak English.)
Ellos leen juntos. (They read together.)
Yo escribo novelas. (I write novels.)

That's for the simple part. I have yet to learn all so this is what I have just posted for now.

 
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