Conjugation of prever

Question

I saw on another site that prever (to foresee; pre + ver) is conjugated

• preveo
• prevés
• prevé

And this agrees with a book I´m reading that uses the word prevés. But our conjugator here says

• prevo
• preves
• preve

Is either acceptable, or is there an error on this site´s conjugation page for prever?

• prevés looks like voseo Spanish (vos for tú) - qfreed May 11, 2010

Answer 1

RAE's conjugation

Presente (indicativo)

• preveo
• prevés
• prevé
• prevemos
• prevéis / prevén
• prevén

I would imagine that the accent marks are to make the conjugation pronunciation align with the word Ver. Being as Ver is monosyllabic, the stress is going to fall what would be the 2nd syllable in Prever so an accent mark is needed to change it from its "grave" status. It would be similar to Spanish's trying to retain stress with an accent mark when a suffix is added (ly adverbs: feminine adjective+mente). Here we are adding a prefix rather than a suffix, but I think they are trying to maintain consistent stress placement.

• I need to learn to use that site. Me confunde. Gracias! - LeslieW May 11, 2010
• The use of the tilde makes sense, otherwise the emphasis would fall on the prefix "pre". It seems it wants the emphasis to stay on the ver part of the conjugation and not shift to the prefix. - Moe May 11, 2010
• What about entrever, rever, etc.? Those verbs also follow the ver structure, and have two syllables, yet they have no accent above the e.. - Gravemarker May 11, 2010
• Someone always has to come up with an argument to ruin what seems like a good intuitive reasoning! Don't confuse me with facts. - qfreed May 11, 2010
• Doesn't "entrevé" have an accent over the final "e"? - mountaingirl May 11, 2010
View 2 more commments >>

Answer 2

Maybe it depends on what tense you are trying to use it in? I don't know, but that seems like it would make the difference here... I'm an English speaker however, so hopefully someone else can shed more light on it for you. Good luck!

Answer 3

I could have sworn that I learned that the conjugation for prever is derived from the conjugation for ver, meaning that the set that includes -(pre)veo -(pre)vés and -(pre)vé would be correct... however, the presence of the accent above the e nullifies that notion. It doesn't really seem to fit with any of the usual patterns of conjugation, so I'd wager that the conjugation is actually

• preveo
• preves
• preve etc.

Maybe? I'd appreciate it if someone better versed in these matters could enlighten us.

Answer 4

Microsoft Word Recognizes your version to be words, while this sites version to be incorrect.

• Ah, the question then becomes... do I trust Microsoft to know Spanish? :) - LeslieW May 11, 2010

Answer 5

Moved this from "vocabulary" to "website" category because now I want to report an error in our conjugator.

• ¡Oye!, LeslieW - Here is a conjugator that accepts both/either "http://tools.verbix.com/webverbix/Spanish.html?verb=irse&imageField;.x=9&imageField;.y=10" - Moe May 11, 2010
• Alas, Moe, now I am confused again! - LeslieW May 11, 2010