is used as an auxiliary (only in the passive voice, such as “La ley fue aprobada” (“The law was passed”)).Did you notice the drastic change to “to be” compared to “sleep”? In English, “to be” is just like its Spanish equivalent ser in that it:.Haber: Just as in English, one of the most common auxiliary verbs in Spanish is haber (“to have/to exist”).These are present in both English and Spanish, and combine with a main verb such as sleep. Functional words such as auxiliary verbs (“helping verbs”) serve a grammatical function, but don’t add any semantic content or meaning to the sentence.Note: In Spanish, the present tense is normally used in place of present continuous.

Verbs can combine to include additional information (such as the fact that the action is continuing).

Regular English verbs vary little in their specification of person (only adding an -s in the third person in this example).

In English, verb inflection can look like this: Person Present tense Present Past tense (Singular) continuous (to be +ing) First person I sleep I am sleeping I slept Second person You sleep You are sleeping You slept Third person He/She sleeps He/She is sleeping He/She slept A few things to notice in the chart above:

Though native speakers often don’t realize it, English has a lot of patterns similar to Spanish that can help us understand and apply the rules of Spanish conjugation. For more on the different person categories and personal pronouns in Spanish, see this guide. Spanish uses one extra category of person that corresponds to addressing “you all/you guys” in English. The form of a verb changes to show who perpetrated the action (the person) and when it occurred (the tense). Person and tense changes: ser (to be) and ir (to go)įirst, let’s take a look at how and why Spanish verbs change their forms by comparing them to their English counterparts.Changes in the yo form: hacer, estar, and escoger.To be or not to be: That is the infinitive.This guide will help prepare you to encounter these tricksters in the wild and understand their irregular ways. Verbs which do not follow the dominant conjugation scheme are called irregular verbs, and they are extremely common in Spanish (just as they are in English). After taking a few minutes to look at Spanish verbs, you will find that beneath the surface they are full of surprises.

Simple present tense irregular verbs