Summary of –ar, --er, and ir Verbs - The Spanish Class

¡Buenos días!

We have come to the end of exploring Regular verbs in Spanish. Here is a brief recap:

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We learnt that there are three types of Regular Verbs in Spanish: ones that end in -ar, -er, and -ir.

We learnt that when we conjugate a verb in English only the 3rd Person Singular changes by the addition of the letter “s”.

In contrast, every single pronoun form in Spanish (from 1st Person Singular to 3rd Person Plural) undergoes a change.

To conjugate Regular Spanish verbs we scratch off the ar, -er, and ir at the end of the verb then add {o, as, a, amos, an}, {o, es, e, en}, or {o, es, e, imos, en}.

As I have mentioned before, if we could master the conjugation process in Spanish, we would be well on our way to understanding the foundation of the language. Here is a reminder:

Last week, I asked you to compare and contrast the conjugations of –er and – ir verbs and to let me know what you saw. If your answer was that: the conjugations for –er and –ir verbs are identical except for the 1st Person Plural, you would be correct.

Now, let’s look at the table above and just clarify a few things before we end this lesson:

● The 2nd Person Plural in English is “you”. When we are speaking informally, we may say “y’all” but that is not recommended in formal speech.

The 2nd Person Plural in Spanish is “vosotros”. However, this form is only used in Spain and rarely in the rest of Latin America-- that is why I have not been teaching them to you.

Usted = formal “you”. Usted is used to show respect or formality.

Usted ≠ it. The word “it” does not exist in Spanish. (Please see the class on “It and Plurals in Spanish”)

I hope you enjoyed learning about conjugations these last few weeks and can now see that there is nothing to be afraid of: we do it automatically in English and it just takes a little more explaining in a foreign language.

Here is this week’s Words & Phrases Pyramid: