the supermarket

los alimentos congelados

frozen foods

los productos lácteos

dairy products

el estante

rack

la escala

scale

la canasta de compras

shopping basket

el pasillo

aisle

los productos enlatados

canned goods

las bebidas

beverages

los artículos de hogar

household goods

the spanish colors

amarillo

yellow

anaranjado

orange

azul

blue

blanco

white

gris

gray

marrón

brown

morado

purple

negro

black

Spanish Verbs

For most beginning students of Spanish, one of the hardest things is understanding verbs. That’s because verbs in Spanish act differently from verbs in English. There are many Spanish verbs (like ser and estar) that convey distinctions in meanings that don’t exist in English! You’ll discover tenses (like the subjunctive) that you never knew existed. Strangest of all, you’ll discover that verbs in Spanish not only contain information about when the action took place (the tense), but also who performed the action (the subject).

Spanish verbs are tough, but this section will help you master them. Before you dive in, you need to know a little vocabulary first.

• verb: an action word
• subject: who performs the action (e.g., I, he, she, you, we)
• tense: past, present, future, etc.
• infinitive: the unconjugated form of a verb, such as “ to write,” “ to be,” “ to want,” “ to run.”
• conjugation: the process of changing the form of a verb to reflect the desired tense and subject
• regular verbs: verbs that follow the “rules” of conjugation
• irregular verbs: verbs that break the “rules” of conjugation
  

Here’s a taste of what you will learn about Spanish verbs. In English, you always have to specify the subject before the verb. For example…

• I write. (present tense)
• You wrote. (past tense)
• We will write. (future tense)
  

In Spanish, all that information can be contained in a single word. For example, here are the same sentences as the ones above, except in Spanish.

• Escribo. (present tense)
• Escribiste. (preterite past tense)
• Escribiremos. (future tense)
  

In order to speak Spanish properly, you are going to have to learn how to form those verbs properly, through a process called conjugation.

Spanish tenses

are more diverse then in English, also a finite verb agrees in person and number with its subject (the doer of the action), even when the subject is understood without being expressed by a noun or pronoun. There are three persons which exist in all tenses in Spanish: First person is the speaker, second person is the one spoken to, and third person is the one spoken about.
First person singular: (Yo) soy marinero (I'm a sailor). First person plural: (Nosotros) somos marineros (We are sailors)
Second person familiar, singular: (Tú) eres abogado (you're a lawyer). Second person familiar, plural: (Vosotros) sois Americanas. (You girls are Americans.)
Second person polite, singular: Ud. es muy generoso (You are very generous), Second person polite, plural: Uds. son muy generosos. (You all are very generous.)
Third person singular: (Él) es abogado. (He is a lawyer). Third person plural: (Ellos) son abogados. (They are lawyers.)
Note: The usted/ ustedes (the polite "you") form of address is second person but uses third person verb forms.