Thursday, July 15, 2010

Regular Spanish verbs

I couldn't find a good, short, easy explanation about regular Spanish verbs. And as I never really took the time to learn them (after almost a year of learning Spanish xD) I decided to make a quick chart to study, and some pinpoints for when to use them.

Present
Preterite
habl o
habl as
habl a
habl amos
habl áis
habl an
com o
com es
com e
com emos
com éis
com en
viv o
viv es
viv e
viv imos
viv ís
viv e
habl é
habl aste
habl ó
habl amos
habl asteis
habl aron
com í
com iste
com ió
com imos
com isteis
com ieron
viv í
viv iste
viv ió
viv imos
viv isteis
viv ieron
Imperfect
Future
habl aba
habl abas
habl aba
habl ábamos
habl abais
habl aban
com ía
com ías
com ía
com íamos
com íais
com ían
viv ía
viv ías
viv ía
viv íamos
viv íais
viv ían
hablar é
hablar ás
hablar á
hablar emos
hablar éis
hablar án
comer é
comer ás
comer á
comer emos
comer éis
comer én
vivir é
vivir ás
vivir á
vivir emos
vivir éis
vivir én
Conditional
Subjunctive
hablar ía
hablar ías
hablar ía
hablar íamos
hablar íais
hablar ían
comer ía
comer ías
comer ía
comer íamos
comer íais
comer ían
vivir ía
vivir ías
vivir ía
vivir íamos
vivir íais
vivir ían
habl e
habl es
habl e
habl emos
habl éis
habl en
com a
com as
com a
com amos
com áis
com an
viv a
viv as
viv a
viv amos
viv áis
viv an
Gerund
Past participle
habl ando
com iendo
viv iendo
habl ado
com ido
viv ido

Present
Pretty obvious when to use this, same as in English

Preterite
Past tense.  You use this one when:
-          Something occurred at a fixed point in time
-          Something was done a specific number of times
-          Describing a chain of events
-          Something occurred in a specific enclosed period of time
-          Describing a sudden change of mood
(…in the past)
So, generally, you use the preterite when you know exactly when something happened.

Imperfect
Another past tense. This is used:
-          When talking about actions that occurred repeatedly
-          When something occurred over an extended period of time
-          To start off something you describe, like ‘we were going home when… ‘
-          When describing feelings and mental actions
(of course,  in the past)

Future
You use this when usually in English you would use will or shall. For things in the near future it’s usually better to use ‘ir a’, for things further in the future, use the future tense. It’s also used to express wonder or probability in the present tense (‘who could she be?’).
Note that in the future tense, the endings get added to the complete verb and not tot the stem.

Conditional
This is a very easy one as all you need to do is add the endings of the imperfect (in –er and –ir) to the complete verb (like in the future). This makes it basically a future in the past.
It’s often used wonder or probability in the past (‘who could she have been?’), but also just to describe the future from the perspecrtive of the past.

Subjunctive
The subjunctive is usually used to express doubt, hope, a wish, an opinion.. anything that’s not objective or a fact. It can be quite tricky. It is NOT used with these expression:

creer que ...
to believe that ...
no dudar que ...
to not doubt that ...
es cierto que ...
it is certain that ...
es claro que ...
it is clear that ...
es evidente que ...
it is certain that ...
es obvio que ...
it is obvious that ...
estar seguro que ...
to be sure that ...
es verdad que ...
it is true that ...
no cabe duda que ...
there's no doubt that ...
no es dudoso que ...
it is not doubtful that ...
no hay duda que ...
there is no doubt that ...

Credit goes to Study Spanish. All I did was make a summary.

7 comments:

  1. A good explanation :) I would like to learn Spanish when I am confident with my German. Spanish is on my list of languages I want to speak.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Nice :) for me it's the other way around - I want to learn German after Spanish

    ReplyDelete
  3. Good idea to learn German as well! I always say that it is easier for German people to learn Dutch than for Dutch people to learn German because of the complexity of the German grammar. The German case system is a bit tricky for Durch and English natives. But both languages belong to the Germanic language group, so you have an andvantage to learn German and Swedish. Fasulye

    ReplyDelete
  4. Spanish - English - German

    creer que ... = to believe that ... = glauben, dass...
    no dudar que ... = not to doubt that ... = nicht daran zweifeln, dass...
    es cierto que ... = it is certain that ... = es ist sicher, dass...
    es claro que ... = it is clear that ... = es ist deutlich, dass...
    es evidente que ... = it is certain that ... = es ist sicher, dass...
    es obvio que ... = it is obvious that ... = es ist offensichtlich, dass...
    estar seguro que ... = to be sure that ... = sicher sein, das...
    es verdad que ... = it is true that ... = es stimmt, dass...
    no cabe duda que ... = there is no doubt that... = es besteht kein Zweifel, dass...
    no es dudoso que ... =it is not doubtful that ... = es ist nicht zweifelhaft, dass...
    no hay duda que ... = there is no doubt that ... = es besteht kein Zweifel, dass...

    Fasulye

    ReplyDelete
  5. Spanish grammar is quite similar to English grammar. If you combine it with Dutch grammar, the scructire isn't that much different, except for the fact that you don't say the pronouns most of the time.

    Anyway, I had to memorize all these freakin' tables in Spanish for college, but then discovered that tenses I hadn't learned through rote memorization but just through input stuck as well as the memorized verbs. So there's no real need to memorize the forms as long you're getting enough Spanish input.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I've decided that I really hate memorizing conjugations from charts. Now I do it from exposure and repeated practice where it becomes engrained and remembers...rather than memorized out of context and remembered. I agree with Ramses that input is important here.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Yeah.. I never do this anymore xD And I never actually did, I realised pretty much after I wrote this that it doesn't work

    ReplyDelete