learning spanish verb conjugations

Spanish Verb Conjugations - The Basics

Spanish Verb Conjugations are NOT, as you may have thought, something to be afraid of when learning Spanish. In fact they will actually make learning Spanish a whole lot easier as they will help to clearly define who or what performs an action and when that actiontakes place, unlike in English where there can be a great deal of ambiguity.

Spanish Verb Conjugations, where should we start?

Well, the first thing we should not do is presume that you know what a conjugation is, irrespectivewhether they are Spanish verb conjugations or not, so here is a brief explanation or, definition if you prefer.

A conjugation, where linguistics is concerned, is the formation of a specific form of a verb,normally comprising of the stem of a verb and one of various different endings that, whenattached to the stem, will indicate who or what is, was or will be performing a task; and it alsoindicates when, as you can see, the action takes place, more often referred to as the tense.

Another aspect of Spanish verbs you need to be aware of is that they are not preceded by theword 'to', unlike English verbs, which is what usually denotes that a word is a verb in English.

In Spanish the 'to' part of the verb is at the end of the verb stem: In the example that follows, theSpanish verb 'hablar', which is a regular Spanish verb meaning to speak, is used. The stem of 'hablar' is, 'habl-' and the ending, in this case '-ar' is the equivalent of the English 'to'.

With Spanish verb conjugations it is far easier to understand who is performing an action than inEnglish; for example if we take the verb 'hablar' and compare the Spanish verb conjugations to itsEnglish equivalent, you will see that apart from the third person singular there are no changes atall to the English verb stem, making it practically impossible to tell who is performing the taskwithout the use of a pronoun.

With Spanish verb conjugations, however, a specific ending is attached to the stem of the verb toindicate who or what is performing the task.

 Yo hablo - I speak 

Tú hablas - You speak 

Él/ Ella/ Usted habla - He/ She/ You speaks

Nosotros hablamos - We speak 

Vosotros habláis - You speak 

Ellos/ Ellas/ Ustedes hablan - They/You speak 

In Latin and South American Spanish speaking countries it is quite common for the pronouns tostill be used all the time, but speakers of Castilian Spanish no longer uses pronouns and they aredropped completely other than to avoid ambiguity or if being polite.

And that is probably the most basic explanation of Spanish verb conjugations I can give, there areof course regular '-ir' and '-er' verbs that have different verb endings and also irregular verbs thatunfortunately must be learned individually as they do not follow regular conjugational patterns, butin all Spanish verb conjugations should not be feared but embraced as they will actually makelearning and understanding spoken Spanish much easier.

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