How to Conjugate Spanish Verbs

In order to conjugate Spanish verbs correctly we need to understand what a verb is and what a conjugation is. My old teachers used to tell me that a verb is a doing word, and to be honest, it is the most straight-forward and accurate explanation of a verb I have ever heard, so I'm going to stick with it:

A conjugation, on the other hand, is a little bit more difficult to explain simply; but I'll give it a try. A conjugation is a variation of a verb that uses the stem of a verb and various different endings; each ending indicating the person or object performing the task and when the task is or was being performed (tense).

There are three groups of verbs in Spanish, and they are called the -ar, -er and -ir verbs, so-called because every verb in Spanish has one of those three endings. The -ar group of verbs is by far the largest; and therefore has the highest concentration of regular verbs, so we will show how to conjugate Spanish verbs of this group first:

Hablar (to speak)

habl    -o      hablo           I speak   

habl    -as    hablas         you speak (singular, familiar)

habl    -a       habla           he, she, it speaks or, you (singular, polite) speak

habl    -amos    hablamos        we speak

habl    -áis   habláis         you speak (plural, familiar)

habl    -an    hablan          they, you (plural, polite) speak

You'll notice as mentioned earlier, that to conjugate Spanish verbs we utilize the stem of the verb and a different ending that highlights the person(s) or object performing the task, in this case, 'habl' is the stem. You will find that with all regular verbs, the stem will be the verb minus the ending. Also, we are only dealing with the present tense here; there will of course be different endings and variations on stem depending on which tense is being used.

Here's how to conjugate Spanish verbs ending with -er and -ir;

We will use aprender (to learn) and escribir (to write) for examples of regular -er and -ir present tense conjugations.

aprend      -e    escrib    -o    I learn/ write

aprend      -es    escrib    -es    you learn/ write (singular, familiar)

aprend      -e    escrib    -e    he, she, it learns/ writes or, you (singular, polite) learn/ write

aprend      -emos    escrib    -imos    we learn/ write

aprend      -éis    escrib    -ís    you learn/ write (plural, familiar)

aprend      -en    escrib    -en    they, you (plural, polite) learn/ write

Hopefully this will give you an incite into how to conjugate Spanish verbs, obviously there are a lot of different tenses that will all have different conjugations, not to mention the many irregular verbs that don't follow regular conjugational patterns and our suggestion would be to look at the site linked to below as it offers the best Spanish conjugator that covers Irregular Spanish verbs currently available on the internet or in your local bookstore.

There are, however, a number of free Spanish conjugators available online if you look, but pretty much all of them are limited in their usefulness and will you will soon outgrow them as you become more fluent; they are also confined to your pc, not always an ideal scenario if you do a lot of classroom work or are studying on the move.

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