Conjugating Verbs. Please Help!
How do you remember which verb ending to use when a teacher asks for a verb in a certain tense? I am getting confused on all of the endings with -ar and -er verbs especially irregular verbs. Please help!
3 Answers
If you throw out vosotros (which I don't normally use so always have to look up, although I understand them fine when I see them):
Imperfect - 2 sets of endings must be memorized- ar and er/ir
only 3 irregulars:
ser- truly irregular an must be memorized
ver- just leave the e on- instead of making the stem "v" as it should be it is "ve"
ir- take the ar verb endings, and replace the first "a" of those endings with "i"
Conditional and future best learned together, as the irregular stems are identical
regular- conditional use the same imperfect endings for er/ir on all of them- ar included, on the infinitive instead of the stem.
for future, if you have learned the indicative for haber- he, has, ha, hemos, han, then drop the h and accent all but the two syllable one for the endings- é, ás á, emos, án.
The irregulars- ther are twelve (remember that there are always more when they are deritives- eg sostener and mantener will be the same as tener)-
two loose the guts- decir becomes dir, hacer become har.
5 loose the e- podr, querr, habr, cabr, sabr
5 loose the e/i and gain a d- tendr, vendr, pondr , sald, vald (vendr is from venir, not vender)
Perfect tenses- if you learn all above you know how to conjugate haber- perfect is just the correct haber plus the past participle (there are irregulars there, but they must be memorized). No one seriously uses a preterit perfect.
Preterit- harder, and spelling changes come into play (but once you understand the sounds of the endings and the spelling rules you learn to predict the spelling changes)
For the classic irregulars, I memorized 18, in groups, but you still have to memorize the stems:
ser and ir- irregular but identical
dar and ver- work the same, drop the down to the d and v, and use the same endings for both, ver would be regular except the lack of the accents on first and thrid person singular, dar is an ar verb following an ir pattern.
endings for the rest:
-e -iste -o -imos -ieron
uv: estar-estuv, tener-tuv, andar-anduv
u: saber-sup, caber- cup, haber-hub, poder- pud, poner- pud
i: venir-vin, querer-quis, hacer- hic (hiz in 3rd person sing)
j- decir- dij, traer- traj, ducir- duj
This applies to all compounds of above, and in the case of ducir- there is no such verb- only compunds- traducir, producir, conducir, etc.
Unfortunately there are the 3rd person verb changes, they are only in ir stem changing verbs I think, and you have to get used to them
I have no help for indicative present- I learned it long ago and don't remember any cheats.
This may at least give you some patterns, but the truth is, if it were easy, we would all speak Spanish.
Welcome to SpanishDict. You have a really broad question here. There is no simple answer. How much have you learned about Spanish so far?
I would suggest taking our free lessons..here... Spanish courses We also have a grammar section.... here..... Spanish Grammar Scroll all the way down to the verbs.
Once you learn the basic conjugations for verbs such as hablar, deber, vivir, etc, most of the verbs with those endings will be conjugated the same way. It's hard to explain, you need to train your brain to conjugate on the fly, it doesn't come naturally. It's best if you can find someone to practice with. It took me awhile when I was learning, but once I knew how to conjugate the basic verb forms, i could conjugate most verbs on the fly by knowing their infinitive form.
Even with the irregular verbs, there are usually rules in place, like the i before e rule in english. If you see the infinitive form letters ordered in a certain way, much of the time you will know how to conjugate it. However, there are also plenty of irregular verbs that there are no shortcuts to learning, such as ir, ser, tener, etc. An easy way to practive if you don't have someone that speaks spanish, is to just make flashcards with the infintive form on front and the conjugations on back. Once you can get yourself conjugating the basic infinitive forms without looking at the flashcards, it will help the rest to fall in place.
