Want to learn how to conjugate Spanish verbs?
Whether you’re brand new to speaking Spanish, or you need a refresher, this page is designed to help you become familiar with some of the fundamentals you need to know.
In this lesson I lay out the foundational template for working with subject pronouns in Spanish. Subject pronouns represent the people who do an action in a sentence: I, You, He, She, We, and They. Because we conjugate verbs to match the person(s) doing an action, this same Subject Pronoun Table will serve as a key template to verb conjugation in future Spanish lessons. The Spanish Subject Pronouns are Yo, Tú, Usted, Él, Ella, Nosotros(as), Vosotros(as), Ustedes, Ellos, and Ellas.
Please don’t be intimidated by the word “conjugation.” This grammar term just means the changing of verbs to match with the person or persons doing an action in a given sentence. For example, we add an “s” to the word “eat” when the person doing the action of eating changes from “I” to “He” — “I eat.” changes to “He eats.”
In this lesson, I explain how to conjugate regular -AR verbs in the present tense. Using the same Subject Pronoun Table from the previous lesson, I will show you step by step how to change the verb “TO SPEAK” (HABLAR) to match with the person or persons doing the action of speaking. Furthermore, you will learn how to identify the three categories of verbs in Spanish (-AR verbs, -ER verbs, and -IR verbs). There’s even a practice sentence illustrating how this concept is put to use.
The great thing is that the simple pattern for conjugating HABLAR that you’ll learn in this lesson may be applied to all other present-tense, regular verbs ending in -AR in the entire Spanish language.
In this lesson, I explain how to conjugate regular -ER verbs in the present tense. Using the same Subject Pronoun/Conjugation Table, I will show you step by step how to change the verb “TO EAT” (COMER) to match with the person or persons doing the action of eating. Just as with regular -AR verbs, the conjugation pattern you’ll learn in this lesson can be applied to all other regular Spanish verbs ending in -ER in the present tense.
Remember, the key is to identify the category of verb, knock off the ending, and then add the appropriate present-tense endings that go with -ER verbs. Don’t worry, the process is a bit mechanical at the beginning, but it becomes more natural with practice.
In this lesson, I explain how to conjugate regular -IR verbs in the present tense. Using the same Subject Pronoun/Conjugation Table, I will show you step by step how to change the verb “TO LIVE” (VIVIR) to match with the person or persons doing the action of living. Just as with regular -AR and -ER verbs, the conjugation pattern you’ll learn in this lesson can be applied to all other regular Spanish verbs ending in -ER in the present tense.
After finishing this fourth lesson, you will have all the tools to conjugate all regular verbs in present-tense communication. Sure, there are irregular verbs in Spanish, and of course we’d like to be able to communicate in the past tense, too, but these lessons will help us build a fundamental foundation as we head toward more advanced Spanish speaking concepts.
In this lesson, I explain that although there is only one “the” in English, there are four in Spanish. This is an important concept because it illuminates the importance of gender and number agreement in Spanish. You will learn in this lesson how to use the word “the” properly, and you will be introduced to gender and number considerations in Spanish.
Interestingly in Spanish, as in other languages based on Latin, there are nouns that are masculine and nouns that are feminine. For example, if you are using a singular, masculine noun (as in the word book, LIBRO in Spanish) (most nouns that end in “O” are masculine in Spanish) then you will want to use the singular, masculine article (THE = EL) (EL LIBRO) so that the article agrees in gender (masculine with masculine) and in number (singular with singular). The four ways to say “the” in Spanish are EL, LA, LOS, and LAS.