What were the initial rules for adding AR, ER, IR to Subjunctive Stem Words?
What process or rules were used to initially establish which spanish verbs would have endings in -AR, ER, IR? More than 2/3 of all spanish verbs have the AR ending.
e.g. Why the subj stem 'ACCEPT' became 'aceptAR' as opposed to 'aceptIR', or aceptER'?
I assume some logical rules were used in the INITIAL CREATION of spanish verbs with assigned AR, ER, IR endings.
I am ever so curious!
4 Answers
I was also wondering if there were any rules to help learn which verbs are -ar, -er, or -ir, but it sounds like there are no such rules.
I have another question. It seems like there are no verbs that share a stem, but have different endings; e.g., we have hablar, but not hablir or habler. Is this always true?
I am learning a lot of español from this site. Thank you so much!
OK, you think Spanish is confusing, here's a link to a page describing the six Latin infinitive forms. Latin was one of the primary precursors to Spanish. There's a reason why Latin is considered a dead language.
I would guess that it had something to do with how the verbs were conjugated in the root language that they were derived from. The Spanish language evolved from other languages (and mutated) just as many languages have done. No one sat down and made a list saying these will be AR verbs, those ER verbs, and what's left IR verbs.
In other words, there was no initial creation.
Just out of curiosity....what do you mean by subjunctive stem?
I seriously doubt any conscious thought went into it. It's just the way it's been done for hundreds of years. No one designed the language. As one of my Spanish teachers once said, "There is no why!. That's just how they say it!"
