Lesson 1.3: Conjugation in the present tense

Consider the following words: am, is, are, and be. They look and sound completely different from each other, but if you think about it, don’t they actually mean the same thing?

Well, according to linguistics (the formal study of language), those four words are just different forms of the exact same word: to be. The difference between them is not what they mean, but when they are used: “am” is used after I, “is” is used after he/she/it, “are” is used after other pronouns, and “be” is used after auxiliary verbs such as “can”.

That’s conjugation: changing the form of a verb to fit the context. When you conjugate a verb, you convert it into a form that fits the subject or situation you’re talking about, even though the verb’s meaning doesn’t change. As demonstrated above, English uses conjugation, and Spanish does, too. It’s more complicated in Spanish than in English, but the rules shouldn’t be too hard to understand.

To conjugate a Spanish verb, you need to start with the infinitive, which is the default, non-conjugated form of the verb. Infinitives are the verb forms that you’ll find in dictionaries or in the Tongue of Fire curriculum. English infinitives start with “to”, and Spanish infinitives end in one of three endings: “ar,” “er,” or “ir.”

Then, you need to decide what tense you want. Verb tense refers to when in time an action occurs.

In this lesson, we will learn the Spanish present tense, which mainly translates to the English present tense (ex. I do). The Spanish present tense can also sometimes translate to the English present continuous tense (ex. I am doing).

Then, you should choose the right person and number. In linguistics, “person” refers to who is performing the action: “first person” means the speaker is performing the action, “second person” means the listener is, and “third person” means someone else is. “Number” refers to whether the subject is singular (one person/thing) or plural (multiple people/things).

That means that there are six possible person-number combinations:

That means there are six possible person-number combinations:

But each combination actually goes with a familiar pronoun, as follows:

And then, if you translate those pronouns to Spanish, you get:

Remember that table: we’ll use it to organize all of our conjugations.

For the cells with two options: that just indicates that the pronoun changes based on the gender of what it refers to, with the first option being masculine and the second being feminine. For the plural pronouns, if you’re referring to a mixed-gender group, it’s standard to use the masculine form.

Conjugating -ar verbs

To conjugate an -ar verb (a verb ending in “ar”) in the present tense, remove the -ar, take the piece that’s left over (called the stem), and add the right ending for the pronoun you’re using. Here are the endings for -ar verbs:

More than half of all Spanish verbs are -ar verbs, so congratulations: you can now conjugate more than half of Spanish verbs!

Conjugating -er verbs

Conjugating -er verbs is almost the exact same as conjugating -ar verbs: you just remove the -er and add a slightly different set of endings. The endings for -er verbs are:

Conjugating -ir verbs

And for -ir verbs, just remove the -ir and add an almost identical set of endings:

Irregular verbs

Those three patterns will help you conjugate the vast majority of verbs. However, some verbs are irregular, which means that they do not follow the standard pattern for their verb ending. Many of the most useful verbs are irregular, so it’s important to learn their forms separately from the regular verb patterns.

Omitting subjects

Spanish conjugation might seem needlessly complicated, but it actually lets you do something you can’t in English: omit the subject of the sentence. Since the conjugation of the verb already communicates which pronoun you mean, subject pronouns are totally optional in Spanish.

The formal pronouns: usted and ustedes

There are actually two other ways to say “you”: usted and ustedes. The difference between them and our previous words for “you” is formality. “Formality” in linguistics refers to any time you want to add a level of respect, distance, or professionalism to your language. If your relationship to the listener(s) requires formality, then you should use usted (singular) or ustedes (plural) instead of tú, vosotros, or vosotras. Usted and ustedes are gender-neutral.

All of that is true for Castilian spanish, but in Latin American Spanish, vosotros and vosotras are actually very rarely used; instead, ustedes is the standard plural word for you, and thus it is neither formal nor informal. That’s an important distinction between the two dialects. Some Spanish learning systems don’t even teach vosotros/as because they focus on Latin American Spanish, but we still support those pronouns in case you decide to learn them.

When using usted, you should actually conjugate the verb in the third person singular (el/ella form), despite the fact that you’re really using the second person.

Similarly, when using ustedes, conjugate the verb in the third person plural (ellos/as form).

And that’s all you need to know to use conjugation in the present tense! It may seem like a lot now, but conjugation will get easier with practice, and soon it will feel natural to you. Tongue of Fire has a Conjugation page where you can practice conjugating the verbs you’re learning in all six forms. Now that you know how to conjugate, feel free to use that page as much as you’d like!