Verbs

Introduction

A grammatical person is a linguistic concept to refer to the participants of a spoken or written conversation. Many languages, including English and Spanish, distinguish between three grammatical persons:

1. the speaker or writer himself/herself
2. the people spoken to
3. all others

A sentence is an expression which consists at least of a subject and a predicate to describe the actor and the action, respectively. The subject is usually a person or a thing which is represented by either a noun or by a pronoun, a reference to a noun. The predicate can be a more complicated expression, but often consists of just a single word, a verb.

The verbs of English and Spanish sentences are conjugated, that is, modified to agree with the subject of the sentence in person and number. We shall see in this chapter that the Spanish conjugation rules are different and more difficult than their English counterparts.

Subject Pronouns

For each grammatical person there exist one or more subject pronouns, words which can represent the subject of a sentence. The English subject pronouns are summarized in the following table.

Notes:

• The pronouns for the third person singular take different forms depending on gender.
• The pronouns for the second person singular and the second person plural coincide.

The Spanish subject pronouns are:

Notes:

• Ancient Spanish had the additional subject pronouns nos and vos as synonyms for yo and tú. Apart from historical contexts these archaic pronouns are not used anymore in Spain. However, vos is still prevalent in Latin America.
• The first and second person plural pronouns are derived from the archaic pronouns. They are short for nos y otros and vos y otros (and similar for the female variants).
• In the Latin American dialects the formal personal pronoun ustedes is more common than vosotr(os|as). We shall discuss formal personal pronouns in a subsequent chapter.
• Recall that the definite article el and the subject pronoun él are homophones.
• Except for the first and second person singular, there exist two forms of the pronoun corresponding to gender.
• In contrast to the English pronouns, there is no neuter pronoun for the third person singular.

As mentioned earlier, to refer to a group which contains both male and female individuals, the masculine form of the article, adjective and noun must be used. The same convention applies to pronouns:

Regular Verbs

The English conjugation rules are rather simple because the verb is only modified for the third person singular while the remaining five forms coincide with the infinitive. Example:

The Spanish conjugation rules are more difficult because (a) the conjugation generally affects all six forms, and (b) there are three types of verbs which are conjugated differently.

The basic form of a verb is called its infinitive. The English infinitive usually includes the word "to" while the Spanish infinitive (infinitivo) is always a single word. The type of a Spanish verb is given by the ending of its infinitive. All Spanish verbs ends in ar, er or ir, which results in three types called ar-verbs, er-verbs and ir-verbs. Regardless of the type, the stem of a verb is obtained by removing the two-character ending. For example, the stem of the ar-verb amar is am and its ending is ar.

The Spanish conjugation generally changes the verb's ending. A verb is said to be regular if both of the following conditions are satisfied.

• The conjugation does not change the stem of the verb.
• The six endings depend only on the type of the verb but not on the verb itself.

By definition, a conjugated regular verb can be constructed by appending one of six possible endings to the stem. These endings can be summarized in three 3×2 tables, one for each type of verb:

Notes:

• The ending for the first person singular is always o, regardless of the type of the verb.
• The endings for er-verbs and ir-verbs are similar. Specifically, all three singular endings and the endings for the third person plural coincide.
• The endings for the first person plural can be constructed by replacing the trailing r of the infinitive form by mos.

The table below shows one example for each type of verb. Endings are highlighted.

Negation

Spanish sentences are negated by putting the word no in front of the verb.

Note that the English negated sentence contains the modal verb "do" while there is no modal verb in the Spanish version.

The adverbs "nothing", "nobody", "never", "neither" also indicate a negation and the same is true for their Spanish counterparts nada, nadie, nunca and tampoco. However, in Spanish sentences it is common to combine these with no for additional emphasis, as illustrated in the following examples.

Unfortunately, many important Spanish verbs do not follow the scheme discussed in this section. Some of these irregular verbs are discussed below while a more systematic treatment of irregular verbs is left for a subsequent chapter.

Ser and Estar

There are two Spanish words for "to be", ser and estar, and both are irregular:

As mentioned earlier, está must not be confused with the demonstrative esta ("this"), which is pronounced with stress on the first syllable.

As a rule of thumb, ser describes intrinsic traits of the subject while estar typically refers to properties that are not part of the subject's identity. This distinction can be challenging to adopt for the English speaking Spanish learner because the English language has different methods to express this difference. For example, consider the sentence

This sentence states that the slowness is intrinsic, for instance because the hardware is outdated. If ser is replaced by estar, the meaning changes fundamentally:

Here we used the progressive form of the English verb to express that the slowness is inflicted upon the computer by an external source rather than being intrinsic. This version is appropriate for an otherwise fast computer that is currently overloaded. Similarly, ser is the correct verb in

because this sentence states a general fact. On the other hand, estar is the right choice in

because todavía indicates that the strawberries are expected to change their color eventually, so the color is no intrinsic trait.

The next example is more subtle because the translations of the two Spanish sentences are semantically identical although one sentence employs ser and the other one estar.

The reason for the different verbs in the Spanish sentences is that the first describes an intrinsic trait while the second conveys that an external entity (the production process) is responsible for the material of the tube.

The same subject can be combined with both ser and estar:

In general, when talking about name, origin, sex, belief or profession, ser is the right choice:

Conversely, to describe a mood, only estar is correct:

If "to be" refers to a noun, ser is usually the right choice because such constructions typically describe an intrinsic property of the noun. Examples:

On the other hand, if "to be" refers to an adjective, ser and estar are both possible. The meaning of the adjective is usually independent of whether it is used together with ser or estar, However, there are exceptions:

Exceptions

There are exceptions to the rule of thumb stated above. For one, if "to be" could be substituted with "to be located", then only estar is correct, even if the described location is an intrinsic property like in the first example below.

Another notable exception are date and time expressions. Here only ser is correct. Examples:

We shall cover dates and times in detail in a subsequent chapter.

Hay

The Spanish hay (third person singular of the verb haber) is a relict of old times. Among other uses it states that something exists. When used in this way, hay is synonymous to existir and translates to "there is" or "there are". The thing whose existence is stated can be qualified with an indefinite article, but the article is often left out. Examples:

Sentences with hay can be rephrased to use estar instead, but the meaning differs slightly, as illustrated by the following example.

The first sentence is about the existence of the picture while in the second sentence the definite article El implies its existence and the intention is to inform about the location. To emphasize the location even more, it can be moved to the beginning: En la pared está el cuadro. Note that it is not possible to reorder English sentences in this way.

Phrases

There are many phrases containing ser or estar, some of which cannot be translated literally. Below is a short list.

Note that in the last example ser is a noun, Also, the gender of the indefinite article un in the penultimate example does not match the gender of the accompanying noun gallina, implying that this is an accusation towards a male person.

ir

Like ser, this verb is completely irregular:

One interesting property of ir is that certain parts of the conjugation coincide with the conjugation of ser. For example, the translations of "I went" and "I was" are identical (fui). We will cover past tenses in a dedicated chapter.

Unlike the English "to go", ir can be used reflexively (i.e., applied upon oneself), in which case it means "to leave". For example, nos vamos (literally "we go ourselves") means "we leave". We shall discuss reflexive verbs in a subsequent chapter.

Another application of ir is to construct the Spanish future tense, similar to the English "going to" future. This use case will be discussed in detail in the chapter on future tenses.

Phrases

querer

This verb is more flexible than its English counterpart. Besides "to want" it can also mean "to love". For example, te quiero and te amo are more or less equivalent. The conjugation is irregular because an i is inserted in certain cases:

Let us also point out that querer can be a modal verb. That is, a verb which changes the meaning of another verb. Example:

We will discuss this querer and other modal verbs in a subsequent chapter. For now it suffices to know that the Spanish and English grammar rules for modal verbs are similar. In both languages it is possible to append an infinitive verb to the conjugated modal verb like in the above example.

Phrases

poder and saber

The verb poder is also irregular because an e is inserted in four of six cases:

Like querer, poder is a modal verb. In fact, poder is always used together with a second verb. Example:

A related verb is saber, whose conjugation is only irregular in the first person singular:

The English "to can" means either "to know how" or "to be able to". For example, "he can't swim" either means that he has never learned to swim or that it is currently impossible for him to do so, for example because he is sick. If it is clear from the context that "to know how" is meant, both poder and saber are possible. Example:

In other cases only one of the two verbs is correct. For knowing how to do something one uses saber while poder describes an ability. Thus, ella sabe/puede hacerlo both translate to "she can do it", but the first sentence states that she knows how to do it while the second means more like "it's OK if she does it".

Phrases

tener

This is another important irregular verb which exhibits two irregularities: insertion of g in the first person singular and insertion of i in three other cases.

With an object, tener is used just as the English "to have":

The expression tener que is equivalent to the English "to have to":

There is one difference, however: "to have" can be both a full verb as in "you have fun" or an auxiliary verb of a compound tense as in "you have won" while tener is always a full verb. As we shall see later, that's because Spanish compound tenses are formed with a different verb (haber).

A number of related verbs are conjugated in the same way as tener. All verbs of the following table have direct English counterparts:

Phrases

Solutions

Exercise 1

Fill in the entries of the following conjugation tables. All verbs are regular.

Exercise 2

Fill in the correct conjugated form of the indicated verb.

Exercise 3

Fill in the correct form of ser or estar.

Exercise 4

Use the correct form of either poder or saber to fill in the blanks.