learning spanish lesson 2 step 1

Verbs are an important part of any language - every full sentence has one. If its been a little while since you've studied English at school, here's a simple description of a verb. A verb is a "doing word". Run, walk, play, eat, smile, cry, look, sneeze and sleep are all verbs. These verbs are in the infinitive form. Notice the difference between "run" and "he ran". Even though they represent the same action (to run), there are different ways of expressing it ("she ran", "they're running"). When we take a verb in its infinitive form, and then covert it to a more definitive form (he speaks, I speak), we are said to have conjugated it. Now that we understand how verbs work in English, let's look at Spanish verbs.

In Spanish, almost all verbs in their infinitive form end in the following :-

	-ar
	-er
	-ir

This makes it easy to identify a verb. While there are some exceptions, most Spanish verbs follow a set pattern when we conjugate them. We'll learn some very simple rules, and once you understand the basics, you'll be able to speak whole sentances in Spanish!

Personal Pronouns

Before we can begin to conjugate verbs, we first need to learn Spanish personal pronouns. You use pronouns every day, probably without even realising it. I do this, he did that, they went there. Do you understand?

yo	I	nosotros (m) nosotras (f)	we
tú	You (informal)	vosotros (m) vosotras (f)	you all
él	He	ellos	he  (plural)
ella	She	ellas	she (plural)
Usted	You (formal)	Ustedes	they (formal)

Note - (m) indicates masculine form, (f) feminine

Present tense

To keep things simple, we're only going to start with the present tense. We'll look first at -ar verbs, and then move on to -er and -ir verbs.