how do you know which verbs are radical changing?
eg tener-tieno
5 Answers
tener-tengo
Unfortunately, you have to learn them from experience. There are patterns that exist, but ultimately, you will learn them as you use them. For instance, poner has some irregular forms among its tenses so similar verbs will also like suponer, presuponer, etc.
There are also patterns that exist among the conjugations (ar,er,ir) within tenses. What you will do is learn a verb like tener that has a 1st person, singular, go ending and then learn the other GO verbs (tener, venir, poner, salir, etc.). But, in the end, it will become a matter of recognizing each verb from use.
If tener changed to tieno, that would indeed be radical. I'm wondering if you're thinking of 'irregular' verbs?
I've found that writing things down by hand and attempting to repeat by memory is an effective memorization technique. So for tener you could first list the subject pronoun and then try to write down the conjugated forms of the verb. Repeat until you know it!
Tener
Yo - Tengo
Tú - Tienes
Él/Ella/Ud - Tiene
Nosotros - Tenemos
Vosotros - Tenéis
Ellos/Ellas/Uds - Tienen
Also keep in mind that there are verbs that conjugate exactly like tener:
Contener - to contain
Detener - to detain
Mantener - to maintain
Obtener - to obtain
Retener - to retain
I think that you need to hear the verbs spoken or do alot of reading. As you know Spanish verbs are very irregular, but they seem to group thenselves into similar groupings where in a given group they kind of act the same. I'm a non native speaker but I've read alot so to me they're more or less obvious. To answer you're question, I don't think that there's any way to know other than to hear or read them over and over. I hope that helps.
I wonder if the questioner is referring to stem changing verbs.
