Introduction to Verbs in Spanish – Lesson 10

Welcome to the yellow lessons: verbs

This is our first yellow lesson. From now on, all yellow lessons are about verbs. Today is a short introduction: what verbs are, what “conjugating” means, and what’s coming in the next lessons.

Don’t worry if you don’t remember everything after this lesson. It’s just to get you familiar with the idea. Everything will become much clearer once we start with real Spanish verbs.

What is a verb?

A verb is an action word: a word that describes what someone or something does. Look at this sentence:

In the previous lesson we learned that I is a subject pronoun. The word that tells you what that person is doing, walk, is the verb.

In English, the basic form of a verb starts with “to”: to walk, to read, to do, to become, to grab, to fly, to hold. This basic form is called the infinitive.

Spanish infinitives end in -ar, -er or -ir

Spanish doesn’t use a separate word like “to”. Instead, the infinitive is recognizable by its ending. Every Spanish verb ends in -ar, -er or -ir:

These are the three categories of verbs in Spanish. We’ll go into them in detail in a later lesson.

What does conjugating a verb mean?

When you use a verb in a sentence, you often have to change it a bit so it matches who is doing the action. That’s called conjugating the verb. In English, it barely happens:

English	to walk
I	walk
you	walk
he / she / it	walks
we	walk
they	walk

Only he / she / it gets an extra -s. Everything else stays the same.

In Spanish, the verb changes for almost every person. Here’s a sneak peek with hablar (to speak):

Pronoun	hablar (to speak)
yo	hablo
tú	hablas
él / ella / usted	habla
nosotros / nosotras	hablamos
vosotros / vosotras	habláis
ellos / ellas / ustedes	hablan

See how the ending changes every time? That might look like a lot, but it has a big advantage: the ending already tells you who is speaking. That’s why Spanish speakers often drop the pronoun: hablo español already means “I speak Spanish”.

Regular and irregular verbs

There are two kinds of verbs:

• Regular verbs follow the normal pattern. In English, to walk or to bike: I bike, you bike, he bikes. Easy to predict.
• Irregular verbs do their own thing. Think of to be in English: I am, you are, he is. You can’t even recognize “be” anymore!

English has quite a lot of regular verbs. Spanish has more irregular verbs, and unfortunately, the most-used verbs are often irregular. Like ser (to be):

That’s why we’ll take the most important verbs one by one, really in depth.

What’s coming in the verb lessons

Here’s the plan for the yellow lessons in this course:

• 15 of the most used Spanish verbs, in depth, one by one.
• The three categories of verbs: -ar, -er and -ir.
• The main tenses: present (I am), past (I was) and future (I’m going to be).
• Then 25 to 50 more verbs. Because you’ll know the rules by then, you won’t have to study them one by one anymore.

Want a head start? On my Spanish verbs page you’ll find conjugation charts for the most common verbs, with every tense.

Quick check: is it a verb?

Which words are verbs? Think about it, then click to check.

1. “I read a book.” Is “read” a verb?

Yes: it’s what I do.

2. “The house is big.” Is “house” a verb?

No: it’s a noun, a thing.

3. Is “comer” a Spanish verb? How can you tell?

Yes: it ends in -er. It means “to eat”.

4. Is “casa” a Spanish verb?

No: it doesn’t end in -ar, -er or -ir. It’s a noun: house.

5. In English, which person changes the verb “to walk”?

He / she / it: walks.

6. Is “to be” a regular or irregular verb?

Irregular: I am, you are, he is.

Quiz: introduction to verbs

8 quick questions to check the basics.

Frequently asked questions

How many verb tenses does Spanish have?

Quite a few, but you don’t need them all at once. With the present, one past tense and the near future, you can already say most things. We’ll go through them one by one.

Are Spanish verbs hard to learn?

They take some practice. When I started learning Spanish, verbs were the thing I hated most. But after a while, they became one of my favorite parts, because once you know the patterns, you can suddenly say so much more. I hope the same happens for you!

Before you go to the next lesson

That’s it for this introduction. You don’t need to remember everything: just know what a verb is, that Spanish verbs end in -ar, -er or -ir, and that they change depending on who’s doing the action. In the next yellow lessons, we’ll start with our first real Spanish verbs. ¡Hasta pronto!