Verbs

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What is a verb?

A verb is a "doing" word which describe:
- what someone or something does,
- what someone or something is, or
- what happens to them.

For example: be, sing, live.

1. Verbs are frequently used:
- with a noun,
- with somebody's name or,
- particularly in English, with a pronoun such as I, you or she.

They can relate to the present, the past, an the future; this is called their tense.

2. Verbs are either:
- regular: their forms follow the normal rules
- irregular: their forms do not follow the normal rules

3. Almost all verbs have a form called the infinitive. This is a base form of the verb (for example, walk, see, hear) that hasn't had any endings attached to it and doesn't relate to any particular tense. In English, the infinitive is usually shown with to, as in to speak, to eat, to live.

4. In Spanish, the infinitive is always made up of just one word (never two, as in to speak in English) and ends in
- -ar,
- -er,
- -ir.

For example: hablar (means to speak), comer (means to eat), and vivir (means to live).

All Spanish verbs belong to one of these three types, which are called conjugations. We will look at each of these three conjugations.

4. Regular English verbs have other forms apart from the infinitive:
- a form ending in -s (walks),
- a form ending in -ing (walking),
- and a form ending in -ed (walked).

5. Spanish verbs have many more forms than this, which are made up of endings attached to a stem. The stem of a verb can usually be worked out from the infinitive.

6. Spanish verbs endings change depending on:
- who
- or what is doing the action
- and on when the action takes place.

In fact, the ending is very often the only thing that shows you who is doing the action, as the Spanish equivalents of I, you, he and so on (yo, tú, él and so on) are not used very much. So, both hablo on its own and you hablo mean I speak. Sometimes there is a name or a noun in the sentence to make it clear who is doing the action.

José habla español.
José speaks Spanish.

El profesor habla español.
The teacher speaks Spanish

7. Spanish verb forms also change depending on whether you are talking about the present, past or future, so (yo) hablaré means I will speak while (yo) hablé means I spoke.

8. Some verbs in Spanish do not follow the usual pattern. These irregular verbs include some very common and important verbs like:
- ir (meaning to go),
- ser and estar (meaning to be)
- and hacer (meaning to do or to make).

Other verbs are only slightly irregular, changing their stems in certain tenses.

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