Los verbos irregulares más usados
Spanish has roughly two hundred irregular verbs, and about ten of them carry half of everything anyone says. Today we tighten the ones you already own — ser, estar, tener, ir, ver, dar — and add the four that show up hourly: hacer, decir, poner and salir. Then comes the pair English does not have, saber and conocer, two separate verbs for one English word. Every ladder here is five rungs, never six, because ustedes and ellos always share a form.
Five rows, and the ones you already have
A conjugation ladder in this course has five rungs: yo, tú, él/ella/usted, nosotros, ustedes/ellos/ellas. That last rung does double duty — the form you use for your cousins is the same one you use for 'they' — so every irregular verb is one row shorter than a European textbook will show you. Say these out loud until they run without thinking. ser: soy, eres, es, somos, son. estar: estoy, estás, está, estamos, están. tener: tengo, tienes, tiene, tenemos, tienen. ir: voy, vas, va, vamos, van. ver: veo, ves, ve, vemos, ven. dar: doy, das, da, damos, dan. Six verbs, thirty forms, and between them they hold up an enormous share of ordinary speech.
HACER — to do, to make, and the weather
hacer means 'to do' and 'to make' at the same time, and only one of its five rows is strange: yo hago. After that it behaves itself — tú haces, él hace, nosotros hacemos, ustedes hacen. In the past you already met hice and hizo. Beyond doing and making, hacer also runs the weather, impersonally, with no subject at all: hace frío, hace calor, hace sol, hace buen tiempo. There is no 'it' in those sentences and there never will be one. Ask about the weather with ¿Cómo está el clima?, which is what you will actually be asked here, or with ¿Qué tiempo hace?, understood everywhere. Two more uses worth swallowing whole: hacer la tarea (to do the homework) and hacer una fiesta (to throw a party).
DECIR — to say and to tell
decir is irregular twice over, which is exactly why it is worth ten minutes: yo digo, tú dices, él dice, nosotros decimos, ustedes dicen. The yo form grows the same g as hago, and on top of that the stem vowel slides from e to i in four of the five rows — only nosotros decimos keeps the e. The preterite dije you already have from the past-tense lesson. One verb covers both English 'say' and 'tell', with the person told marked by an indirect pronoun: Te digo la verdad. Le digo la verdad a mi mamá. Notice that le stays put even though a mi mamá already spells out who it is. And when you simply did not catch what someone said, the pan-regional repair is ¿Cómo?; in Mexico you will also hear ¿Mande?, which is warm and completely ordinary. A bare ¿Qué? lands as blunt.
SABER and CONOCER — two ways to know
English has one 'know'. Spanish splits the job in two and the split is not optional. saber — sé, sabes, sabe, sabemos, saben — is for facts and information: Sé tu nombre. No sé dónde está. Put an infinitive after it and it means 'know how to': Sé manejar. ¿Sabes cocinar? conocer — conozco, conoces, conoce, conocemos, conocen — is for acquaintance: with a person, a place, a song. A person takes the personal a: Conozco a tu hermano. A place takes none: Conozco Oaxaca means you have been there. In the preterite, conocer slides to the moment of meeting — Conocí a Camila en Lima is 'I met Camila in Lima'. A pronunciation note while you are here: conozco is ko-NOS-ko and conoces is ko-NO-ses. The z, and the c before e or i, are a plain /s/, identical to s — that is seseo, and it is the standard everywhere in Latin America. Last, saber has a second life at the table: Sabe rico is 'it tastes good', and ¿A qué sabe? is 'what does it taste like?'
PONER and SALIR
poner is 'to put' or 'to place': yo pongo, tú pones, él pone, nosotros ponemos, ustedes ponen. Make it reflexive and it dresses you — ponerse plus a piece of clothing is 'to put on': Me pongo el suéter. Se pone los lentes. Notice that Spanish uses the plain article where English insists on 'my'. salir follows the same shape — yo salgo, then sales, sale, salimos, salen — and covers 'to go out' and 'to leave'. You leave a place with de: Salgo de la casa a las siete. You go out for a purpose with a: Salimos a comer. Two idioms ride on it: salir con alguien is to be dating them, and salir bien is to come out of something well — Salí bien en el examen.
The -go club
Line up the yo forms of the verbs above, add venir and traer from earlier lessons, and a family jumps out: hago, digo, tengo, vengo, pongo, salgo, traigo. Seven verbs whose first person grows a g from nowhere while every other row stays perfectly ordinary. Learn them as one block — chant them in that order — and a large slice of the irregular system stops feeling irregular at all. The trap is assuming the g spreads down the ladder. It does not: it is tú tienes, never tú tienges, and ustedes ponen, never ustedes pongen. The oddity lives in the yo row and nowhere else.
Stem-changing vowels
A second family is less irregular than predictable: the stem vowel shifts whenever the stress lands on it. Three patterns cover almost all of it. e → ie: querer → quiero, pensar → pienso, empezar → empiezo. o → ue: poder → puedo, volver → vuelvo, dormir → duermo. e → i: pedir → pido, vestirse → me visto, decir → digo. In every one of them, four rows out of five change and exactly one does not — nosotros keeps the plain stem, because there the stress has moved onto the ending. Listen for it: quiero, quieres, quiere, queremos, quieren. Only queremos steps out of line. Same shape again with puedo, puedes, puede, podemos, pueden.
Words for the week before a test
An exam brings its own small vocabulary. el examen — plural los exámenes, and the accent appears only in the plural, because the stress refuses to move. Then el ejercicio, la respuesta, and practicar, a plain -ar verb with nothing irregular in it. preocuparse is reflexive and means to worry: Me preocupo por el examen. With hay que from last lesson you can already build the sentence everyone's mother says — No hay que preocuparse. (The short command No te preocupes is worth recognising now; command forms get their own lesson later.) si with no accent is 'if' — sí with one is 'yes' — and bastante covers both 'quite' and 'enough': Lo sé bastante bien. contento is happiness in the moment, so it travels with estar: Estoy contento. Two more for a cold morning: el suéter, which is la chompa in Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia, el pulóver in the Southern Cone and el saco in much of Colombia; and el jugo, as in el jugo de naranja. One habit worth copying: teachers are el profe and la profe in everyday speech, short for profesor and profesora, and it reads as affectionate, not careless.
