Time tenses

In Spanish, you can recognise an infinitive verb because they end in:

1.      –AR (nadar, cantar, escuchar, caminar)

      2.      –ER (beber, comer, leer, aprender)

      3.      –IR (vivir, reir, descubrir, salir)

The stem is the part of the word that comes before the infinitive ending. For example, nad-, cant-, escuch-, camin-, beb-, com-, le-, aprend-, viv-, re- descubr- or sal-.

You need to conjugate the verbs adding different endings to form the time tenses. To do so, you need to add the endings for the present, preterite or any time tense you need. In some time tenses you will need to drop the infinitive and add the ending, in other ones you will add the ending to the infinitive:

Infinitive (Comprar)

Present (Compro - I buy)

Preterite (Compré - I bought)

Imperfect (Compraba - I used to buy)

Future (Compraré - I will buy)

Conditional (Compraría – I would buy)

In Spanish there is an ending for every pronoun subject. The subjects are useful to know, however, they can be removed from the sentence.

The order in a sentence will almost always be:

(Subject) + Verb + Direct Object + Indirect Object + Complements

If the sentence is negative the “no” will always go before the verb:

(S) + NO + V + DO + IO + C        Juan habla español à Juan no habla español.

If the sentence is interrogative, the order remains the same as the affirmative type. However, you must do a rising tone when you make the question:

(QW) + (S) + V?  Habla español. No habla español. Habla español?