Stem-changing Verbs, e changes to i
My grammar book (Spanish Verb Tenes, Dorothy D. Richmond), says that "the e in the stem changes to an i (except nosotros and vosotros). That's right so far, but how do you know how the first person singular of the verbs is.
elegir for example is elijo
therefore not only the e changes to i, but also the g changes to j in the 1st person singular
the same with corrigir
and the frist person singular from seguir is sigo, therefore the u is simply taken out.
How is this to be explained, or does it have to be learned by heart? My book doesn't make any comments about this, only that the e changes to i.
1 Answer
Welcome to the forum!
The spelling changes that you noted are completely independent of the stem changing "e - i".
In the case of "elegir", if you wrote "eligo" the "g" would be pronounced as a hard sound, just like the English word "go". In order to presrve the spit-type sound you need to change the g to a j before the letter "o". Thus, "elijo" and corrijo".
With regards to "seguir", the letter "u" is there only to make the g a hard sound. However, before the "o" the "g" is already a hard sound, so you do not need the letter "u". Thus, you have "sigo".
I think that your confusion stems from the pronunciation of the letter "g". Does your book have a section on the pronunciation of the letter "g"?
Hopefully this has helped.
