Why in the preterite yo form of empezar is it empeće?
I dont understand how it becomes empe?e, can somebody explain this to me?
4 Answers
Howdy, generally if you are a "whatever works" kind of person the answer "empezar is irregular" is a good enough answer.
But there is more to it than that. I don't even know if empezar is uniquely irregular, and by this I mean, I don't know if there are any irregularities in empezar's conjugations that can't be explained by the actual method of writing and speaking employed in the Spanish language.
Specifically for empecé, the reason is orthographical meaning it has to do with the way words are written and spoken in Spanish.
When a z is behind an e in Spanish we write the letter C instead of Z. A short explanation of this can be found here.
In the other areas where empezar is kind of irregular (where the E becomes IE) it is not actually irregular, but rather it is a practice within Spanish that the E becomes IE when stressed. I can't offer a full explanation of this myself as I do not fully understand it, I'm of the "it is irregular as an explanation works" faction.
Este es un proceso fonético que ocurre en verbos cuyos infinitivos terminan en -"cer" o -"zar" El fonema /s/ es representado por "c" cuando va delante de "e" y por "z" cuando se encuentra delante de las vocales "a" u "o".
This is a phonetic process which occurs in verbs whose infinitives end in -"cer" 0r -"zar" The sound "s" is written as "c" when it comes before "e" and as "z" when it is found in front of the vowels "a" or "o".
Not so! In much of Spain the sound /s/ is never represented by either 'c' or 'z' (it can only be represented by the letter 's'). In those areas/countries where the "seseo" is the norm, the sound /s/ may be represented by the letter 's' before any vowel and may also be represented by 'z' or (but only before 'e' and 'i') by the letter 'c'.
In practice, a verb which ends in "-zar" changes the 'z' to 'c' when the inflectional ending would (otherwise) call for the combination "zi"/"ze". Simply put, for verb endings, if the same sound can be attained by either 'c' or' 'z', then write 'c'.
Este es un proceso fonético que ocurre en verbos cuyos infinitivos terminan en -"cer" o -"zar" El fonema /s/ es representado por "c" cuando va delante de "e" y por "z" cuando se encuentra delante de las vocales "a" u "o".
This is a phonetic process which occurs in verbs whose infinitives end in -"cer" 0r -"zar" The sound "s" is written as "c" when it comes before "e" and as "z" when it is found in front of the vowels "a" or "o".
empezar should have changed to empezé in the ordinary way but here is a irregular change so under the same pronunciation ?it turns to be the empecé at last . just memorize it
