why is there so many conjugations for a word??
why is there so many conjugations for one word? like poder- to be able... in english it is just "to be able" but in spanish it is more than one way of saying it, depending on who your talking about... why?? so confusing.... :-D
12 Answers
I suggest that you try to learn Archi, a language with 1,502,839 verbal forms.They have about 25472 verbal forms for each one we have, and yet, their children learn them like any other child learns English as a mother tongue, in just a few years.
Spanish has 17 tenses (or more, depending on your criteria), 59 different forms for a single verb (without attaching pronouns to it), and several hundred irregular verbs.
English verbs have about 17 tenses (or less, depending on your criteria), 4 different forms (to be has 8), and hundreds of irregular verbs.
Chinese verbs have no tenses, only 1 form and no irregular verbs. For them, English is complicated, confusing and illogical.
I think you are approaching your learning from the wrong angle if you think that Spanish is that complicated, confusing and illogical.
Without getting complicated, It is a different system, and once you get used to it it is rather convenient and economical.
You don't have to say " I will eat" you can say "comeré"
The conjugated verb contains the action and the doer of the action,as well as the tense , nice huh?
There is a lot to learn but I like to look at this way. If a 5 year old can speak Spanish, so can I. Just like in English, at a certain point you don't have to think about the verb forms or vocabulary, it's just there, in your mind. I am far from that point but it's not impossible.
An interesting discussion, however, the question of history and origin are largely ignored! Spanish is a Romance language, and almost entirely based on Latin (with a little Arabic thrown in). Study Latin and you will conclude that Spanish is remarkably simple (some very efficient pruning and ... abridgement? was accomplished over the years)! English, on the other hand, is NOT a Romance language - it is based on ... Saxon, Old German, Viking, French, Latin, Hindi, Arabic, etc., etc. (everything any sea-faring person of an island nation ever came into contact with). Not only the general vocabulary, but also the grammatical constructions came from some very different sources. A lot of the "pruning and abridgement" have occurred in English (the "strong verbs" are turning into weak ones), but at the same time, the importation of new vocabulary and the practice of using verb forms as adjectives and nouns, and vice-versa, has made English a study in contradictions, exceptions and peculiarities with great dependence on word order, spelling and punctuation. "The panda eats, shoots and leaves." 
why is there so many conjugations for one word? like poder- to be able... in english it is just "to be able" but in spanish it is more than one way of saying it, depending on who your talking about... why??
I'm not sure why you believe that "to be able" never takes a conjugated form, but this is quite simply not the case.
| Present | ||
| I am able | You/we/they are able | He is able |
| Simple Past | ||
| I/he/she/it was able | You/we/they were able |
Each of these is a conjugated form. If you are wondering why Spanish uses more conjugated forms than English, however, a simple answer to this lies in the fact that Spanish is a more heavily inflected language which means that the subject of the sentence is generally apparent in the verb ending (i.e. the conjugated form of the verb). On the other hand, English is much less heavily inflected which means that it has to rely on other mechanisms. The most striking difference in this regard is the fact that English relies much more heavily on its full set of personal pronouns as well as strict subject-verb-object word order. Still, verb conjugation is dictated by the subject of the sentence just as it is in Spanish. If you do not think so, then just try comparing the following sentences and notice the effect of changing the subject of the verb without changing the conjugated form of the verb:
?I am able to run 1 mile in 6 minutes.
?John am able to run 1 mile in 6 minutes.
?You am able to run 1 mile in 6 minutes.
?They am able to run 1 mile in 6 minutes.
?We am able to run 1 mile in 6 minutes.
or note the problem that arises when using the unconjugated form:
?I to be able to run 1 mile in 6 minutes.
?John to be able to run 1 mile in 6 minutes.
?You to be able to run 1 mile in 6 minutes.
?They to be able to run 1 mile in 6 minutes.
?We to be able to run 1 mile in 6 minutes.
Hopefully, this illustrates the point that English does indeed employ verb conjugation as a method of conveying syntactic relationships. Again, the main difference is that Spanish is much richer in terms of inflection and English is much more strict in terms of word order and pronoun usage. These differences are more structural than they are semantic, but differences should be expected. They are two different languages after all.
in english it is just "to be able" but in spanish it is more than one way of saying it,
Reexamining this statement from another angle you might be surprised to know that when a verb is used nominally (i.e. like a noun), it is actually English which uses the higher number of morphologically distinct forms. In English, we often use both the infinitive and the gerund (present participle of the verb) in such constructions; however, in Spanish you generally only see the infinitive form of a verb used this way:
English
?I like running. [gerund]
?I like to run. [infinitive]
Spanish
?Me gusta correr [infinitive]
Explain to a Chinese speaker, who use only 1 tense, why do you have so many:
01 - Simple Present: He runs.
02 - Present Progressive: He is running.
03 - Simple Past: He ran.
04 - Past Progressive: He was running.
05 - Present Perfect Simple: He has run.
06 - Present Perfect Progressive: He has been running.
07 - Past Perfect Simple: He had run.
08 - Past Perfect Progressive: He had been running.
09 - Future Simple: He will run.
10 - Future Simple (going to): He is going to run.
11 - Future Progressive: He will be running.
12 - Future Perfect Simple: He will have run.
13 - Future Perfect Simple progressive: He will have been running.
14 - Conditional Simple: He would run.
15 - Conditional Progressive: He would be running.
16 - Conditional Perfect Simple A: He would have run.
17 - Conditional Perfect Progressive A: He would have been running.
RE - persistent above - exceptions and peculiarities with great dependence on word order, spelling and punctuation.
It is not allowed for a member of the British Parliament to call another member a liar but this did happen and the member was asked to apologise - he did so in the following manner:
"I called the Right Honourable Gentleman a liar it is true and I am sorry for it . Punctuate that sentence any way you like."
The original question was why there are so many conjugations / the obvious inference being that there are not so many in English.
And no matter what anyone says (about the advantages of Spanish) here the English verb structures are MUCH simpler than the Spanish ones.
It only starts to get a bit more complicated when passives are introduced and we start using Modals.
To be able I'm able to (I can) You're able to (You can) He's able to (He can) We are able to (We can) You-all are able to (You-all can) They're able to (They can)
Now take all of those, but: He can He could He was able He will be able He will have been able He has been able He had been able He would have been able He would be able He is going to be able
Now, all six persons(I, You, He/She, We, You-all, They) for each of these tense, and it would be more if To Be Able had a useful progressive. English is just as complicated.
¡Hola!, BiebersGirl:
There are also many conjugations for English language verbs in the same way as there are for Spanish language verbs.
For example, here is a conjugation chart for the English language verb "to be" ----> To be.
In this way, Spanish is no more confusing than English. Many people think that Spanish is an easier language than English.
Muchos saludos/Best regards,
Moe
Welcome to the forum!
I know it sounds confusing at first, but Spanish can be a very precise language. Much of the precision is the result of very definite tense forms of verbs. If used correctly, these tenses make it possible to say exactly what you intend to say.
English also has many tense forms of verbs, and they are also difficult for non-native speakers to learn.
Other members will likely want to respond. Best wishes in your efforts to learn the language.
What other ways do you know?
Cheers Jaime
